


Gymnasieskola

by hatebeat



Series: Putting the gears in motion [4]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 19
Words: 31,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatebeat/pseuds/hatebeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1987. Skwisgaar latches onto an opportunity to both change his life for the better and get away from his mother all at once by attending a music academy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story (and all others in this series), if Skwisgaar's dialogue is not his normal broken English, he is speaking Swedish.

_Sweden. November, 1987._

Skwisgaar walked into town after school. It was usually best not to be home until around dinner time if he could help it, but by around 5:00 or so, his mom would remember that she had a son to feed and would turn away whoever she had spent the afternoon with. Skwisgaar would often stay at school until they locked the doors and would finish his homework before going home, or sometimes he would just go home anyway and play his guitar in the safety of his bedroom. But today, he walked into town. There wasn't a lot there, but an instrument store had opened up several months ago. He was okay on gear for now, but they had a pretty decent selection of cassettes for sale, too. He'd been saving up his allowance, so he figured today was as good a day as any to go spend it.

The old man who worked there was from the city and had come here to spread the market. There was no competition out here, or something like that. He already owned a few other shops elsewhere, he said. Skwisgaar didn't care about any of that, but the old man knew a lot about music, so he was easy to talk to. As soon as Skwisgaar came in, he greeted him by name, and they talked about guitars for a while, and the new pickups he'd gotten in stock, and a few new records that would be coming out soon. Skwisgaar ended up buying two tapes, but on his way out he nearly dropped them in his haste to pick up a pamphlet that caught his eye.

It was for a school, a high school where he could study music. Which sounded about a billion times better than going to secondary school to study stupid things like natural sciences or English or things like that. But that wasn't even the best part. The best part was that this school was in New York City. 

Skwisgaar's eyes scanned over the information three times before he let himself get too excited. In a little over a year, if he stayed in Sweden, he would probably have to go to secondary school, and that was not something he wanted to do. He could do this! He could go study music, he could be in the cool American rock and roll bands, and best of all, he could _get away from his mom._

He turned back to the man who owned the shop, holding up the pamphlet to him.

"Do you think I can do this?"

The man squinted to see which pamphlet Skwisgaar was waving at him. "It would probably cost a lot of money, Skwisgaar. But I bet if you can afford it, you can do it."

"It says it's a public school, though." Skwisgaar pointed out. "You just have to take a test to get in. Why would it be expensive?"

"Well, even if you get in, you still have to pay to fly there, you have to pay to live there... there's a lot of money that goes into this kind of thing."

Skwisgaar obviously couldn't afford it himself. He was just a teenager! But maybe his mom would help... Times had been tough, though, sometimes tougher than others. He didn't think his mother would be able to pay for this. 

The feeling of overwhelming joy plummeted immediately into the pit of his stomach, and he started to put the pamphlet back on the display. The shopkeeper grabbed his hand, though, suddenly.

"You should take it home and talk to your mother about it," he told Skwisgaar gently.

"No, there's no point," Skwisgaar sighed. "She won't be able to pay for it." Sometimes they couldn't even eat, so how would he be able to go to New York or something like that?

"Take it home," the shopkeeper urged again. "If your mother can't pay for all of it, I may be able to give her something of a loan."

Eyebrows furrowed, Skwisgaar looked up at him, confused. "Why would you do something like that?"

The man smiled amicably at him. "You're the most talented kid I've ever met, Skwisgaar, and I'm getting old."

\---

Skwisgaar took his time walking home, despite how excited he was. Even if that guy offered to give them money or something, they probably couldn't accept it, right? It wasn't the right thing to do. His mom would probably say something like that. She could sleep with all the guys she wanted, but she was always telling Skwisgaar that this or that wasn't _right_.

He hesitated outside the front door when he got home, listening. If his mother was _busy_ , he didn't want to walk in just yet, but... he couldn't hear anything. Tentatively, he opened the door, went inside, and took off his shoes. Everything was quiet, so it was probably safe. He put away his book bag and his new tapes in his room, stuffed the pamphlet in his pocket, and went to the kitchen.

"Mom, I'm home," he said when he found her. She was cooking something, looked like stew or something. It smelled good and it made Skwisgaar's stomach growl.

"Oh, look who it is, I thought you were going to miss dinner," she chided him. "Did you go somewhere after school?"

"I went to the music store. I don't have any homework today."

"Alright, alright. Dinner's almost ready, so go on and set the table."

Skwisgaar's hand was in his pocket clutching at the pamphlet, but instead of pulling it out to show her, he stuffed it down further. He got out some bowls and spoons, some bread and butter, and set the table for them. By time he was done, his mom was joining him at the table with their food.

They didn't talk as they ate, which wasn't all that uncommon, but because Skwisgaar was nervous, it felt like all the pressure in the world was weighing down on them in that room. It knotted up his stomach to the point where he couldn't eat another bite, and he finally set down his spoon.

"Mom, there's something that I want to do," he told her, trying his best to keep his voice steady. He was the man of the house, after all, so he had to be able to speak firmly! But still, his mother was in charge...

"Something you want to do? What is it, Skwisgaar?"

Determinedly, Skwisgaar reached into his pocket and pulled out the now-crumpled up pamphlet. He flattened it out on the table and then slid it across to his mother. He watched her, his heart in his throat, as her eyes took in the words on the cover.

"You want to go to a music school?" she asked him.

"I want to go to that one," he insisted. "In the U.S. There isn't any tuition, and Mr. Brunell said he could help-"

"If this is what you want to do," his mother said, cutting him off, "well, then... we will make it happen."

Skwisgaar was struck speechless. Just like that? It was that easy? She didn't care at all?

"You're not mad?" he asked, dumbstruck.

"Skwisgaar, why would I be mad? I knew you'd want to do something like this ever since you started playing that guitar of yours. I want you to be happy."

She probably just wanted him out of the way so that she could have sex with all of the men in town without having to worry about him, Skwisgaar was sure, but if he got to go, he wasn't going to complain.

"But, Skwisgaar..."

He winced. The worst was probably going to come now!

"Your English is terrible! How on earth do you think you're going to get by in America?!"

He breathed a sigh of relief. If that was her only concern, then everything was going to be fine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> August, 1988.

Skwisgaar had never been on an airplane before. He had never even seen one close up in person. He thought his mother would at least offer to come to the airport to see him off, and even if she had, he would have told her no, that he was a man and could take care of it on his own. However, she didn't even offer. She told him that since he wanted to live on his own, he would have to get used to doing things like this on his own. 

When he got to the airport carrying just his guitar and a small suitcase, he had no idea what to do. Luckily there were signs everywhere. There were people around to answer questions, too, if necessary, but he wouldn't ask. He was a man and he would do this himself. Even though they had ended up borrowing some money from Mr. Brunell, he was pretty sure his mother had to go through a lot to pay for him to do this, so he didn't want to mess anything up. Even if she was probably glad that he was getting out of her way...

Once he was through security, he had a while to wait for his flight. There were people with annoying little children, people sleeping waiting for their planes, people all over the place. Skwisgaar had never really seen such a strange variety of people all in one area before, and he found it somewhat fascinating.

By time he had boarded his flight, though, the fascination had melted away to make room for irritation, and possibly a touch of fear. The woman who was sitting in the seat next to him was rather fat and he realised she didn't understand Swedish at all when a flight attendant tried to talk to her. Skwisgaar looked her over a bit, and then he plucked up the courage to try to practice his English. He would have to use it all the time very soon.

"Am yous New Yorks?" he asked her, slowly.

"What, honey?"

Skwisgaar blinked. She didn't understand him? 

"Ams you... _from_ New York?" he reiterated, more carefully. 

"Oh, no," she told him. That wasn't all she told him, but she spoke so quickly that Skwisgaar couldn't take in anything else she was saying. Even though he caught a few words here and there, he couldn't make sense of it, let alone respond. He ended up half-nodding, and tried to refrain from speaking to her after that.

He was suddenly filled with fear. What if he wouldn't be able to understand anything at school? What if he wouldn't be able to get by on his own, not being able to speak English well enough? He had to comfort himself by assuming that his playing ability would be enough to get by, but what if it wasn't?

Despite that, a whole new level of anxiety overtook him when the plane started its take-off. Once the plane was in the air, though...

He couldn't stop looking out the window. Skwisgaar had never felt more exhilarated than being so high up above the rest of the world. 

\---

The first few steps out of the airplane and into JFK International were like stepping into a new world. Skwisgaar followed the other passengers because he wasn't entirely sure what else he was supposed to be doing, and he ended up at the baggage claim. He had taken his guitar with him as a carry on, which had prompted a little bit of a fight at the airport back in Sweden, but he managed to get his way in the end. Even though he thought he knew really well what his other suitcase looked like, though, it took a while for him to find it amidst all the other bags on the conveyor belt. 

He went about all of his business at the airport very methodically, but that ended once he walked out the front doors. He knew he had to get a cab, but he had never done anything like that before, and he was worried about his English. Would he have to talk to the driver? He had the address of the school written on a piece of paper, so he fished that out of his bag and nervously approached one of the cabs that was lined up outside. 

He tried to remind himself that he was a man and shouldn't be afraid, but when he got to the driver, he managed only to hand him the slip of paper, not saying a word. It worked out well enough, though, because he wasn't sure this driver spoke too much English, either.

Sitting in the back of the cab and watching the city roll past his windows, Skwisgaar's fear started to melt off of him. He had never seen so many other people in his life. He'd been to Stockholm a handful of times, and it was nothing like this. Nowhere near this crowded, and the architecture here was completely different. 

They got to the school, and the driver told him the price. Skwisgaar pulled out the money that he had just gotten changed at the airport and glanced at the meter to make sure, but he felt really hopeless looking at this American money. All of it was the same colour and it was confusing as hell! After taking an embarrassingly long time trying to count out the right amount, he hurried out of the taxi with his bags and found himself staring up at an old, brick building. 

A hint of fear was creeping back up inside of him, but it wasn't dissimilar to the feeling of flying.

\---

The guy from the school was tall, thin, and very Scandinavian-looking, but of course he didn't speak a word of Swedish. Skwisgaar followed behind him as he led him down the hallways, explaining this and that about the school. He was really only catching the meaning of every few sentences, but he just nodded as if he got it. 

The school wasn't really that big, not as big as Skwisgaar thought it would be. Apparently it only held about 200 students total. There were a lot of music practice rooms, though, and pretty much every commodity Skwisgaar could ever want. Much more convenient than the school he'd been attending back home. 

"You must be tired from the flight," the guy told him, which Skwisgaar understood well enough, so he kind of nodded. "I'll show you to where you'll be staying."

The school wasn't a boarding school or anything, but since it had attracted some international attention, they were able to provide some housing for students who had come abroad to study. After Skwisgaar originally passed their entrance exam, they had sent him a letter explaining the housing situation and told him that he would have a roommate, but Skwisgaar knew nothing about the roommate, and he honestly wasn't used to socializing that much. Ever since he had started playing guitar, he hadn't seen much of a point in having friends.

"Here we are. These are the student apartments," the guy told him, pulling a key from his pocket. He unlocked the door and Skwisgaar peered inside. It was only one room, with bunkbeds, two desks, and a small kitchen area. There were some shelves and things, and he could see a door leading to a bathroom, and a closet.

"This ams all?" he asked skeptically. "No two rooms?"

"Well, Skwisgaar, in order to keep housing affordable for our international students, this is the best option we can provide. It's very expensive living in the city, after all."

Skwisgaar shrugged. Well, as long as his roommate didn't mind him practicing guitar...

"Who does I lives to withs?" he asked, setting his suitcase down and laying his guitar carefully on the bed.

"Your roommate? He hasn't arrived yet, but we're expecting him tomorrow. His name is Yoji Hirokawa. We placed him with you because he also plays electric guitar."

Skwisgaar just nodded. That was alright. If it was another guitarist, maybe they could play together or something. That was all he really cared about.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> August - September, 1988.

Skwisgaar was laying on the bottom bunk bed playing his guitar when the door to the apartment opened the next day. He looked up, feeling a little bit timid, but it was the same guy from yesterday, and he had a boy with him. Skwisgaar assumed that was his roommate, but he had been thinking about it since yesterday and he realised he was pretty nervous about living with another person.

He sat up just a little bit when they came in.

"Skwisgaar, this is your roommate, Yoji Hirokawa."

The boy gave him a little bit of a bow, and Skwisgaar blinked in confusion. "Just Yo is okay."

"Hellos, Yo," Skwisgaar said.

"Yoji, this is Skwisgaar Skwigelf." Skwisgaar just sort of nodded in acknowledgment. "Skwisgaar, I hope you've been settling in nicely since yesterday. I'll leave the two of you to get accommodated, but you need anything, just call the office."

The guy left them, Skwisgaar reclining on the bed, and the new kid just standing in the doorway. Yo put down his bags and took off his shoes right there in the doorway, and Skwisgaar didn't say anything, just watched him.

"Your name is very interesting," Yo said to him, and even though he spoke kind of slowly, Skwisgaar was kind of ashamed that this guy's English was better than his. "Where are you from?"

"Sweden," Skwisgaar said, turning a bit so he could lean up on his elbow. "Yous ams, uh... from, eh, _Asien_? Ja?"

"Mm," Yo nodded. "I come here from Japan."

Suddenly, Yo was opening his suitcase and digging around for something. He pulled out a small wrapped package and held it out to Skwisgaar with both hands. Skwisgaar just stared at him for a moment, confused, but Yo was clearly giving it to him, so he took it.

"This is gift from my city," Yo explained, smiling at him.

Why was this kid giving him a gift? They had never even met before. Skwisgaar started to open it, though, and it was some kind of candy, it looked like.

" _Tack_ , eh, thanks you," Skwisgaar said awkwardly. "I doesn't, eh, has no gifts to yous." Was he supposed to? They didn't even know each other. Yo didn't seem too upset, though, just started to unpack his bag. Skwisgaar hadn't really unpacked much of what he had. He had felt awkward since getting to the apartment yesterday and he hadn't even eaten. He had tried to go to the store to get something to eat, but he didn't really know what anything was, so he gave up and shut himself back in the room.

"Has you, uh, bes in United States before? Yous speaks English good," Skwisgaar admitted begrudgingly. His mother had made him study English really hard in the months before he came here, but he still wasn't able to understand well enough, and conversing was pretty hard.

"Mm, I am not so good yet, but I come with dad maybe two or three times. He is businessman, so sometimes we come to America."

Skwisgaar didn't understand entirely, but he understood enough to know that Yo had been here a lot more than he had. 

"Okays, ams you _hungrig_? I tries to, eh, to buys the foods buts, eh. Foods in this places ams, uh, strange, hm?" If Yo had been here before, he might at least be useful, even if Skwisgaar didn't quite want to live with another person.

As the two of them walked together down the sidewalk to the convenience store, Skwisgaar tried to think of something to talk about, but not only was his English pretty horrible, he also just wasn't used to this kind of thing.

"Sos, ehhh, whats type of guitars has you?"

"Now I play Greco EG58," Yo said. 

"Greco?" asked Skwisgaar, not sure if he was hearing right. Some sort of cheap brand, or something, maybe?

"It is Japanese brand. Many famous Japanese musicians play Greco recently."

"Huh," Skwisgaar said, disinterested. Who cared what the Japanese were playing? The good bands were all from Europe and the U.S. If this guy wanted to play like Japanese musicians, why would he come to the United States to study music? Seemed kind of like a waste of time. "Which musics you plays?"

"I study the jazz guitar."

Jazz? Was he going to have to listen to this guy play jazz music in their room? Because he did not want to listen to that. Skwisgaar was really rapidly deciding that he did not like Yo at all, whether he could be useful to him or not.

"I plays metals, ands the rocks n roll," Skwisgaar told him somewhat dismissively. To his surprise, Yo grinned at him.

"I also like metal. But, you can't study playing metal at school of music."

\---

When classes started a week later, Skwisgaar was glad to get away from Yo for a little while. He couldn't really put his finger on why. Something about his attitude. He was perfectly polite and he respected Skwisgaar personal space inside the apartment as much as possible in only one room, but it always just seemed like he thought he was _better_ than Skwisgaar. 

However, even though they got him away from Yo, Skwisgaar's first day of classes was rougher than he expected. His first class of the day was a sight-reading singing class, and not only could Skwisgaar not sing at all, but he really wasn't that great at reading music very quickly. He was held back after his level one theory class after the teacher asked him a question to which he didn't know the answer, and Skwisgaar responded claiming to have music dyslexia. The rest of the class laughed like it was hilarious, but the teacher didn't even crack the tiniest smile. 

After those boring classes it was lunch period, and somehow, Skwisgaar was more nervous for that than for anything else. Back in Sweden, he often spent lunchtime by himself with his guitar, but not only did he not know what was normal or not here, he also had a meal plan that let him get a lunch every day and he didn't feel much like skipping meals if he didn't have to. Back home, his mother fed him breakfast and dinner most of the time, but they didn't waste money on extra meals like lunch, most days. Sometimes times were just tough. Skwisgaar understood that. But now he didn't have to live that life anymore. He was a free man, after all.

Free man or not, though, walking into the cafeteria by himself was difficult. People were sitting together and eating their lunches together even though it was only the first day, and Skwisgaar didn't know where to go or what to do. Still, he reminded himself that he was a man and he should face his challenges head on, so he went through the lunch line, picked out the same food as the person in front of him, and then scanned the room for somewhere he could sit. 

After a moment of standing awkwardly and trying to avoid the direction he could see Yo sitting in, he spotted a table with a few free chairs at the very end. He headed straight toward it, and when he got there, he put his guitar in one seat and sat down next to it. Some of the other people at the table looked at him, but he was down at the end, so it seemed they would leave him alone and let him sit there. Well, they should. He wasn't bothering anyone. They swiftly seemed to forget he was there as he ate his hamburger, and he decided then that American food was pretty good. 

Skwisgaar was nearly done eating when a little triangle made out of paper came flying at him and plopped down right on his tray. He just stared at it for a second, and then looked in the direction it came from.

"Sorry, man, flick it here!" one of the boys from down the table called to him. Uncertain, Skwisgaar just plucked it off of his tray and slid it down the table back toward them. 

American food was good, he had decided, but he wasn't really at all sure how to talk with American teenagers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> October, 1988

Every night like clockwork, Yo would finish his dinner, plug his guitar into his amp, spread several lesson books open over a music stand, and play. He had worked it out with the neighbours that this was an alright time for him to make noise, or something like that, so he made use of it every day. Every day at that time, Skwisgaar sat on his bed with his guitar, fingering his frets quietly while giving Yo various looks of disgust. 

It was nothing but jazz music, constant jazz music, and Skwisgaar had grown bored of hearing it after about one day. Unfortunately, it looked like there was no end in sight. When Yo would perfect one song, he'd just move onto a new one. And at first, he was always terrible at it, and he'd play it ten million billion times until he was not so terrible at it. There really wasn't a level above 'not so terrible', though. It was still jazz music.

"Readings those papers alls of the times is, uh. Is, eh, hangings you back," Skwisgaar told him after about a month of it. He was watching Yo practice, but he was fingering along with him on his own guitar. Not that he wanted to play jazz, but it was hard to practice what he wanted to practice when there was all this awful noise going on in his room.

"What?" Yo looked up from his book.

"Looks, you does always the sames thing," Skwisgaar told him. He wasn't sure how to phrase what he wanted to say. Even though he'd been in the United States for a while now, his English was still terrible. He thought it was getting better, but it was really only that he could understand more. When it came to him talking, especially trying to explain something, he was still extremely restricted. 

"Playsing ins from that books, ja? You... sees that's notes in there, you plays them, again, again, agains."

"That is how you learn," Yo argued. "You cannot learn unless you repeat over and over, right?"

"Nos, you's... if... it's... _du förbättrar inte!_ " Skwisgaar sighed, frustrated. He didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, so guitar in hand, he went right over to Yo and snatched the cable from his guitar to plug into his own.

Effortlessly, he played the first sixteen or so measures of the piece Yo was currently trying to learn. It was maybe kind of hard for jazz or something, but if you were used to playing metal, it was no big deal. 

"Why do you know this?" Yo asked him, frowning. He looked down at his book again, like it had some answer, but Skwisgaar rolled his eyes at him.

"You looks sees, eh, only notes, ja? You sees ins the books, not sees ons you's finger. Listens to notes, watches you fingers, learns more," Skwisgaar explained. 

"But if you don't read from book, you can't hear it to learn it, either," Yo pointed out. Skwisgaar was just grateful that he understood.

"Sos, who cares? _Varför_ you plays a thing somes guy writes, likes, uh, some deads guys, who cares?" There was no point to learning anything that was written in these stupid books. Either Skwisgaar learned a song that was played by a band he liked by listening to it and copying it, or he would just make something up himself. He didn't understand why he should have to ever learn to play things that someone wrote that didn't even sound good in the first place.

"It is in order to improve technique. If you play the same type of music always, you don't learn any new thing."

"Pfft, you plays that jazz always, always the sames, uh, types."

"It would be no good to not play lessons from _sensei_ 's books," Yo said. "I play what I am told."

"I not does thats," Skwisgaar said, handing him back the cable. The amp popped and buzzed loudly until Yo took it back from him. "I not, eh, can even read the books."

He reclined back on the bed, his fingers automatically starting into a series of scales. 

"You can't read music? But you are in the music school." Yo's voice sounded as if he was threatening to laugh at Skwisgaar, but Skwsigaar shrugged it off. He'd been trying to fake it to make up for his music reading skills up until this point, and although he'd been scolded a few times for his inability to sightread, he'd managed to get by. "Also, you can't listen to lessons book on a tape before you learn- it's not rock music. How you learn lessons?"

"Ja, I makes up it," Skwisgaar said flippantly. " _Lärare_ not likes it, he says, _nej_ , does it, eh, does it differensk. Sos I does. But always ams betters sound my makes up one."

Yo didn't look impressed. He was frowning at Skwisgaar. "You really can't read music?"

Huh. This guy definitely thought he was better than Skwisgaar, and Skwisgaar resented that. He would admit to being worse at English, but there was no way in hell that he was worse than this guy at guitar.

 

The next evening as Yo finished up his dinner, Skwisgaar plugged his guitar into his own amp and launched right into some fancy fingerwork, really showing off. 

Yo put his dishes in the sink and frowned at him. "What are you doing? You know it is my time for practice."

"Ja, I knows that." Skwisgaar just didn't give a shit. He was so sick of listening to jazz playing in his room every night, he had to do something drastic. Well, maybe it wasn't drastic, but at least something more fun. "You before says thats you likes the metals, ja, sos we plays togethers little bits, huh?"

"Play metal together?" 

"Ja, inless you ams think you can't plays that." Skwisgaar was taunting him on purpose. First of all, he had been driven to this! Nobody could listen to jazz every night and stay sane! But anyway, you couldn't play metal if you felt so calm all the time. Metal was about feeling and emotion and things like that. Metal was passion! It wasn't something you could just methodically play out of a book.

Yo told him that he liked metal, but Skwisgaar had never seen him express any kind of emotion like that which was necessary to play metal.

Yo looked like he wanted to argue, would probably cry about how he had to practice for his lessons for tomorrow or something like that, but he was being challenged, and a real man wouldn't back down from a challenge.

" _Hikeru n da yo,_ " Yo muttered, agitated, and Skwisgaar smirked; even though he had no idea what Yo was saying, he knew that he had touched a nerve. Good. 

"Alrights then, you plugs in, we plays the metals, let's goes, jazzy boys."

Yo pulled his guitar from his gigbag and shoved the cable in. It was cute that he wanted to prove himself, but Skwisgaar was going to prove once and for all that he was the superior guitarist in this room. Yo could be good at English all he wanted. Skwisgaar didn't need to be good at English, not if he was great at guitar.

"Okays, tries and keeps up to me, ja?"

Skwisgaar started simply enough, picking a chord progression and starting into a pattern of riffs. Yo was able to match his rhythm, playing a fourth below him, which was no big deal, anyone who had ever picked up a guitar could do that. He changed it up, moving to a new section, and Yo followed him after a few measures- which was too slow as far as Skwisgaar was concerned- but he was keeping up for the most part, so Skwisgaar started to get a little more technical, but Yo didn't change it up.

When Skwisgaar launched into a solo, he expected Yo to just keep up the rhythm since he was sure Yo probably couldn't do much else in that position, but Yo tried to follow him. Needless to say, it was a disaster. Skwisgaar finished the solo but then just stopped playing, staring at him.

"That's, eh, nots so goods, huh? You solos strange. Not likes, eh, likes a normal metals."

Yo looked down at his guitar as if it was the reason his playing sounded so weird and bad. "Because I don't listen to the same metal as you, maybe."

Come to think of it, Skwisgaar hadn't even heard Yo listen to any music. Skwisgaar always played his music straight from the stereo, but Yo listened to a cassette player with headphones. Skwisgaar thought that was kind of selfish, because if he was listening to anything worth listening to, why wouldn't he share it? But knowing Yo, it was probably really bad. Maybe even more jazz. Awful.

Skwisgaar was playing riffs idly, just something to do with his hands. "Sos? What's metals you listens to?"

"Will you listen to some?" Yo actually looked pleased about it, so Skwisgaar shrugged and turned off his amp.

"Ja, okays, plays them unsides the stereos."

Yo put a tape in and then sat down on the bottom bunk next to Skwisgaar. 

"This band is called Anthem. From my country. They are very popular now."

Skwisgaar kept playing his now-unplugged guitar, but he started to unconsciously sync up with what he was hearing. It was definitely different than the bands he usually copied.

"It ams likes the glams metals, maybes _bättre_ some." It was better than glam metal, but it seemed to be related to it. Skwisgaar kept listening intently, always enjoying the feeling of dissecting new music. Suddenly, though, he noticed something.

"Ams that's sound, that ams bass does the thing?" The bass was playing such a complex melody and rhythm, and the guitar was the one that was toned down. How could that be possible?

"Mm, Japanese bassist play bass more than in America, I think," Yo said.

The more Skwisgaar listened, he noticed that the bass was doing those things the whole time, playing just as complex of a melody as the guitarists. Maybe even moreso. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. It wasn't his kind of music, maybe, but it sounded really good.

"I not knows _vad_ to says, this metals of _Asien_ , pretty goods, ja?"

Yo smiled, a really genuine smile. "Here is another you will like, I think." He popped that tape out of the stereo and put in another. "This band is Loudness. They are rival band with Anthem."

Yo pushed play, but Skwisgaar didn't like this one as much right away.

"Sounds like for ladies," he said, a bit disgusted. 

"Wait just a little." Just a minute in, a guitar solo started. "Here, the guitarist is Takasaki Akira, fastest guitarist in whole world."

"Pfft, probablys no," Skwisgaar scoffed. Nobody paid attention to Japanese music, so there were definitely better, faster guitarists. But he was actually really impressed. This guy was crazy fast at guitar! Even if it was metal for ladies, this was pretty good...

"Heys, Yo, I borrows from you these tape, ja? Wants learns guitars of Taksa...siki."

"Takasaki," Yo corrected.

"Ja, whatevers."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> November - December, 1988.

Every day, Skwisgaar went from his classes to the cafeteria for lunch without speaking to anyone. Every day, he got a hamburger and french fries in the cafeteria and he ate them alone at the end of the same table that was crowded full of people laughing and joking and whatever down at the other end. Once he had settled into the routine, Skwisgaar hadn't been bothered at all by his lack of interaction with the other students. After all, back in Sweden he hadn't really spent much time with others his age.

It wasn't until Skwisgaar noticed that Yo had made friends that he noticed he hadn't made any at all.

The fact that Yo had started making friends when he wasn't even nearly as good of a guitarist as Skwisgaar pissed him off and he took it as a personal challenge. And maybe a little bit of a wake-up call; even if he was the best guitarist in this whole school, there was only so far he could get playing by himself. He could have kept playing by himself all he wanted at home in Sweden, but he came all the way here to New York City, so he should do something useful.

As much as he resented his mother, he knew that sending him here hadn't been easy for her, so he could at least make use of his time here.

So, one day, he sat a couple of seats closer to the others from the end of the lunch table than he usually did. And the day after that, he moved down another seat, closer. The next day, he moved closer. The day after that, he hesitated just slightly as he approached the table, but then he set his tray down next to one of the guys there.

"Can I sits heres?" he asked, in what he hoped was perfectly clear English. It was the same kid who had talked to him on the first day, just a little bit. 

"Yeah, man, go 'head," the guy said to him, all smiles. The guy pulled his backpack off the seat of the chair and put it on the floor. Skwisgaar didn't expect them to be so friendly toward him or maybe he would have sat closer sooner, but he put his guitar down in the seat on the other side of him and sat down to have his lunch.

Mostly, the group of people who sat there every day continued like they always did. They told jokes to each other and threw food at each other and they laughed about a lot of things, and Skwisgaar didn't really say anything, and they didn't really say anything to Skwisgaar, but he laughed at some of the things they said and nobody questioned it or acted like he wasn't allowed to be included.

So, Skwisgaar started to sit there every day without even asking, and nobody complained. For a while, it was exactly the same. He would laugh at their jokes, but even when he wanted to say something, he didn't feel confident enough in his English to try. It was different than talking to Yo- Yo was a foreigner, too, so even though his English was much better than Skwisgaar's English, Skwisgaar still didn't feel very much like he was being judged or that it was important. These were all Americans. If they didn't understand him, they would look at him funny like the people did in public places like convenience stores.

He had been sitting there for almost two weeks before he talked to them for the first time.

"The dude told me to stop playing like I have fat finger," Rick told them, the guy he sat next to every day.

"Oh my god, Mr. Curtis actually said that?" Carrie laughed in response from across the table. 

"Yeah! How's that even helpful? Ain't he supposed to be a teacher?"

"Put your fingers on a diet, Rick," teased Jared. 

"Nah, man, Mr. Curtis is the one who needs to go on a diet," Rick retaliated. 

"Ja, I sees that guy, he looks likes just a big fish," Skwisgaar added, laughing along with them. They all looked at him, like they were suddenly realising he had never really joined in their conversation before. Nervousness took hold of him, like maybe they would kick him out of their lunch table or something, but then Rick laughed, and Carrie started to laugh, too.

"Dude does look like a fish. Like a whale!"

Everything continued as normal, and Skwisgaar took another bite of his hamburger. It was easy to come here and play guitar and be the best. Meeting people and fitting in was the real challenge.

\---

Christmas break was getting closer, and Skwisgaar realised that Christmas in the United States was going to be weird. He hadn't thought about it before, but when December 13th rolled around and neither Yo nor anyone at school had ever heard of St. Lucia's day, an emptiness took up residence in his chest. Since it was just him and his mom, he always dressed up as a tärnor to bring her breakfast on St. Lucia's day, even though he was too old for it. When he was younger, he even wore the candles on his head, and it made his mother smile so much. But St. Lucia's day was just December 13th in the U.S. and Skwisgaar went to school and went to classes and lessons just like he always did.

He missed Sweden just a little bit. So after class, he did something he hadn't done since he had arrived in the US: he sat down and wrote a letter to his mother. He didn't say anything important, just told her that his classes were going well, that he was learning a lot, and wished her a good holiday. But even just writing in his own language for a bit was a small comfort. 

A few days before school ended for break, everyone was talking about their plans for the holiday during lunch. Skwisgaar kept out of the conversation. He wasn't looking forward to spending his Christmas doing nothing.

"Skwisgaar, what about you?" Carrie asked, dragging him into the conversation against his will. "Are you going to go home and see your family over break?"

He didn't need to explain the fact that he didn't really have a family, that it was just him and his mother. "Nos, the airplanes, eh, it ams lots of moneys."

He would like to go home for a while if it wasn't so expensive, but he couldn't ask his mom to pay for another flight just for him to come home for a week and a half. When he had asked Yo if he was going home for Christmas, Yo told him he wasn't going, either. Skwisgaar asked if it was because of the cost, too, but Yo just told him that Christmas wasn't that big of a deal in Japan. He said the New Year was, but he was looking forward to seeing the New Year celebrations in New York this year. It was like a big party.

Yeah, that would be kind of cool, but Skwisgaar didn't care that much.

"So you're not going to do anything for Christmas? You do celebrate Christmas in Sweden, right?" she pressed. He wished she would shut up. He didn't want to talk about it.

"Ja, we does. It ams big deals, pretty much."

She was quiet, then, and gave him a weird look, like pity or something. Skwisgaar didn't want her pity. This was part of growing up and being a man- not being attached to things you had when you were a child. He was a man now, living on his own.

"Well, why don't you come have Christmas at my place?" Rick suggested after a moment. 

Skwisgaar just looked at him in surprise. 

"Reallys?" No, that would be really strange and bizarre, right? He didn't know Rick's family or anything, and his English was very poor, still... "No, I doesn't wants, uh, intrudes."

"Man, my family is huge. I got a brother and sister, and I have two uncles and four aunts and too many cousins to count. One more guy is nothing."

"You don't gots to asks to yous parents or nothings?" Skwisgaar asked, skeptical.

"Nah, they don't care. It'll be fine."

"Ja, well, okays, then," Skwisgaar agreed, but he was really unsure about it. He couldn't even begin to know how to act around an American family.

He didn't think about it, though, until later that night, but he was going to have to get presents or something for them. Shit.

\---

On Christmas Eve, he walked over to Rick's apartment alone. It was too bizarre to him to be walking by himself through a city that wasn't really home on a day like Christmas Eve. He felt more homesick with every step he took. 

Skwisgaar was used to celebrating on Christmas Eve, eating a feast, but Rick told him that not much was going to happen until Christmas morning. That was when everyone opened their presents, so Skwisgaar was going to spend the night so that he could be there for the fun in the morning. It was all very weird, and he was particularly stressed out because he left his guitar at home in his apartment. 

He didn't have much money to buy presents, either, but he went to a bakery and bought pastries for Rick's family that were as close as he could find to those he would in Sweden.

Outside Rick's door, he found himself hesitating. He tapped his fret fingers on his thigh unconsciously, working out a silent melody. Once he went in, it would be too late to back out. He just didn't want to feel awkward. He wished he had his guitar. But he didn't, and he was here, and he was a man, so he would face things head on like a man.

Skwisgaar knocked and the door opened just a moment later. It was a woman, older, but maybe not quite as old as his mother.

"You ams uh... Rick's mothers?" Skwisgaar asked, uncertain.

She smiled warmly at him. "Oh, you must be Skwisgaar. Just call me 'Mama', honey. You get in here, come on, out of the cold with you." She stepped back from the door. " _Ricky! Your friend is here!_ "

Skwisgaar stepped in, uncertain, and looked around. It wasn't that big, but it was completely the opposite of his home in Sweden. A little bit untidy, a little bit cramped, but it seemed like a home. What a real home was supposed to be like, maybe. There was a Christmas tree laden with about a thousand too many ornaments, and when Skwisgaar saw that, he was glad to have come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friend Ashley (tumblr user [tokiistheking](http://tokiistheking.tumblr.com)) drew some fanart for this chapter, related to younger Skwisgaar celebrating St. Lucia's day. Please check it out [here!](http://tokiistheking.tumblr.com/post/66748366719/doodles-for-bry-and-his-precious-fic-you-should)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December, 1988.

By Christmas evening, Skwisgaar had shaken off the layer of nervousness that had been clinging to him the previous evening. Rick's family was huge and noisy and nice, and everyone wanted to talk to him and ask him questions about Sweden, and Rick's younger sister kept touching his hair. One of Rick's cousins played guitar, too, and they talked a lot about gear and specs. Somehow, even though he struggled with his English talking about things like his home and his mother and his old school, it was perfectly easy to talk to someone who only wanted to talk about guitar.

He had eaten really amazing food, food like he'd never gotten to eat before in his life, and every bit of it was delicious. He couldn't get enough, even after eating until he was so full he couldn't swallow another bite, but even so, Rick's family kept encouraging him to eat more. Everyone had had presents to open, even Skwisgaar, which was embarrassing since he hadn't been able to get much of anything for any of them. 

Typically, he and his mother spent Christmas together quietly and would give each other something small. Skwisgaar had always wanted to have Christmas with family, but he didn't know even his grandparents. He'd never gotten to spend Christmas in an apartment like this filled with people, with music and laughter, with a big Christmas tree.

By the end of it, he felt like he had become part of a family for the first time in his life, but he also had to try hard not to think about his mother who was probably spending Christmas alone. 

Feeling very full and a little sleepy, he lounged across Rick's bed. Rick was sitting at the other end of it, and his cousin Jeremy was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the chest of drawers. They'd gotten tired of playing the new NES games and were listening to the tapes that Jeremy had gotten from Rick's mom. It was really interesting music, good stuff that he hadn't heard before. His fingers were going through the motions of the frets as he listened to it, and his palms itched to hold his guitar.

"I could plays this," he finally heard himself saying, frustration from separation with his guitar reaching its peak.

Jeremy laughed. "You think you can? It's harder than it sounds."

"Sos?" Skwisgaar narrowed his eyes, propping himself up bit on his elbows. "I can does it."

"Alright, prove it," Jeremy said, a laugh on his lips. He clearly didn't believe him, and that pissed Skwisgaar off.

"But I doesn't has, uh, with me my guitars," Skwisgaar pointed out. 

"So let's go get it."

"Jeremy, just chill," Rick interrupted. "Don't listen to him, Skwis, dude gets all competitive about shit that don't even matter."

"No, he right, let's gets my guitars," Skiwsgaar said, pushing himself to sit up.

"It's _Christmas_ ," Rick sighed, but he rolled off the bed and to his feet, resigned. 

 

On their way through the living room, Rick's mother stopped them. "Where do you boys think you're going?"

"Chill out, auntie, we got a guitar battle to have," Jeremy said, throwing his jacket over his shoulders. 

"It's _Christmas_ ," Rick's mom protested. 

"That's what I said," Rick muttered, but he grabbed his trumpet case from against the wall anyway, and followed Skwisgaar and Jeremy out the door.

"Why you brings the trumpets?" Skwisgaar asked, outside.

Rick just grinned, and said with a shrug, "Can't let you guys have all the fun."

 

The tension between them dissipated during the cold walk to Skwisgaar's apartment. Tiny snowflakes drifted leisurely to the earth, too small to leave any lasting impact, yet the air was frozen and their lungs burned with it. 

"I wasn't known America get so cold," Skwisgaar commented when they were about halfway there. 

"Are you serious?" Jeremy laughed, shivering a little with his hands in his pockets. "Doesn't it get way cold in Sweden?"

"Ja, cold there. But parts I from doesn't as colds as lot of Sweden," Skwisgaar shrugged. "And here's cold feel differnsk."

"How's it different?" Rick asked, confused, but Skwisgaar only shrugged in response. He wasn't sure he could put it into words even in Swedish, so there was no way he would be able to explain it in English.

Rick and Jeremy started talking about something that Skwisgaar couldn't follow entirely, about movies or something. Skwisgaar had never seen them.

When they got to his apartment, he noticed that the windows were dark before he even unlocked the door to Yo's absence. Yo hadn't said he was going anywhere for Christmas, but Skwisgaar hadn't asked, either.

Skwisgaar let them in and flipped on the light, half-expecting to find Yo sleeping or something, but his bunk was empty. Apparently he was actually not home. Skwisgaar felt a weird pang in his chest; Yo had found someone to spend his Christmas with?

"This is a cool place," Rick commented, stepping inside behind him. He set down his trumpet case and started to shed his coat. "Wish I didn't have to live with my mom or nothin'."

"Haves a crappy roommates, though, not so greats," Skwisgaar said with a shrug. 

"The Explorer is yours, right?" Jeremy asked, already approaching his and Yo's guitars, both propped up on stands next to their amps. It made Skwisgaar tense up right away. He didn't like people going near his guitar. It was his. He was chosen by it. 

Well, he tried not to think that very often because it was stupid, and more importantly it sounded _childish_ , and he was a grown man, now. But how else could he explain it?

"Ja," was all Skwisgaar said in response, but he went right over and picked it up before Jeremy got any ideas about touching it. 

"Wait, your roommate's not here, right? So we can play together." Jeremy was already picking up Yo's guitar and hefting the strap over his shoulder before Skwisgaar could say anything in protest. If he didn't like his guitar being touched, maybe Yo wouldn't, either, but...

Yo had no soul when it came to music. It was probably fine. Besides, fuck that guy, making more friends than Skwisgaar or whatever...

"Puts that tapes unside the stereo there," Skwisgaar told Rick, pointing at the stereo next to the bunkbeds. "You gots to bes the uh, the _domaren_... the uh, guy who says whats who ams bests."

"Pfft, for a little while. Might join in with y'all, though," Rick said, pulling one of the tapes from his pocket and going to the stereo. He pulled out what was in there, looking over the face of it with curiosity. "Is this Chinese?"

"Japanese. Roommate froms there," Skwisgaar explained, feigning disinterest even though he had been the one listening to that tape. 

"Oh, weird." Rick pushed play on the tape he had loaded in. 

"Man, rewind that, go back to the song before it," Jeremy said, but Skwisgaar's fingers were already ready and alive on the frets. He plugged in while Rick rewound, but by the time the song started, he felt as if electricity was pumping through his veins. A whole day was too long to go without playing guitar, he then realised. 

"Here good?" Rick asked.

"Yeah, I know this one," Jeremy said, and he put his fingers on the fretboard like he was ready to show off.

Skwisgaar let him start, listening to Jeremy copy the music as it was. Jeremy knew this music pretty well, but Skwisgaar hadn't heard it before tonight. But it was a familiar chord progression, not that hard to mimic, so he started to pick it up a few measures in, started to play right alongside Jeremy.

"Not bad," Jeremy said, but he was smirking. The chorus started in and it all changed, and for just a second, Skwisgaar was lost, but he was back on track within a few beats, and Jeremy looked pissed off.

When they reached the guitar solo, though, Jeremy clearly thought he had the upper hand. He did, if you considered having memorised and copied a guitar solo someone else wrote to be an accomplishment, but Skwisgaar didn't, and he was able to improvise one on the spot, able to pick out the flow the original guitarist was going for and harmonized well with it. Jeremy looked proud of himself just for being able to pull off a copy.

But it only took that one song for Skwisgaar to know that he was right: he was a better guitarist than Jeremy, just like he was a much better guitarist than Yo.

When the song ended, Jeremy scowled like a sore loser, but said, "I gotta hand it to you, you weren't kiddin' around, man. You know your stuff."

"Thanks you," Skwisgaar said, suddenly embarrassed.

Somehow, accepting rivalry and competition was much easier than accepting praise. 

"You wanna go again, man?" Jeremy asked, and Skwisgaar smiled, but a sound made him look over his shoulder. Rick was unpacking his trumpet from its case.

"Hey, just 'cause I play brass don't mean you guys get to leave me out," Rick said, sounding a little defensive, but he had a grin on his face. "Let's do this shit."

 

It was surprisingly easy to play together, even if they were just following a tape. It would be harder to improvise with other people, Skwisgaar was pretty sure, but he hadn't really had much opportunity to try it, yet. Yo was completely hopeless for that. 

They played through half the tape, and Skwisgaar was surprised that they hadn't gotten any noise complaints from the neighbours; Rick's trumpet was loud, louder than their amps, and it was getting late. But maybe they were visiting family for the holiday or something. As long as they weren't complaining, it wasn't Skwisgaar's problem. He was having... fun?

Having fun wasn't something he had come to America with an intent for, but... 

Rick was in the middle of a really great trumpet solo over the bridge of a song when the sound of the door opening made Skwisgaar turn his head. There was Yo, coming in the door.

"Hej, Yo, merry Christmas," he said in greeting, but didn't stop playing.

Yo's eyes narrowed, and ignoring Skwisgaar's words, he walked right past him and approached Jeremy, threat of aggression in his compact body.

"Hello, that is my guitar. Please do not touch it," Yo said, all politeness, but he was very angry, Skwisgaar realised. 

"Yo, we don't means nothings," Skwisgaar started to apologise.

" _Please_ do not touch my guitar," Yo repeated. "Please put down."

"Sorry, man, we were just jammin'," Jeremy said, taking the strap from his shoulder. "I'm from outta town, didn't got mine with me."

"We just has funs, Yo," Skwisgaar said quietly, but he knew that he was in the wrong. He would kill Yo if Yo let anyone touch his guitar when he wasn't home.

"It is important to me," Yo said firmly, and accepted his guitar back from Jeremy, looking it over as if it had endured some great trauma.

Before then, Skwisgaar hadn't really respected Yo at all, but in that moment, he started to. Just a little, though. He was still a terrible guitarist.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December, 1988.

Skwisgaar spent half of Christmas break hanging out at Rick's house. They went to see a couple of movies with his older brother, Marcus. His mom let Skwisgaar stay for dinner every time he came over, which was amazing because the food that she cooked for them was amazing, even if it did make him miss his own mother's cooking. Just a little bit. His little sister sat on the arm of the couch one afternoon and braided Skwisgaar's hair while the two of them laughed at a dumb tv show. 

Near the end of break, Skwisgaar was woken up by the sound of a ringing telephone and reached clumsily out from his covers to grab for it, vaguely wondering why stupid Yo didn't pick it up since Yo was always awake so much earlier than him.

"Hallå," he murmured into the receiver, half asleep.

"Hey, Skwis, it's New Year's Eve." It was Rick's voice on the phone.

"Vad är... times, what ams times? Now?" Skwisgaar asked, eyes shut.

"It's like ten am, man, wake the hell up already," Rick laughed at him. Skwisgaar grumbled a little bit, and pulled up the blanket, covering his head and the phone.

"What's you calls for? Wants hangs out today?"

"Yeah, hey, there's a party tonight, a big one. It's people from Marcus' school, but I'm inviting our crew, too. You down?"

"Ja," Skwisgaar agreed without a thought, but the English-speaking part of his brain wasn't really awake yet. He didn't catch all of it.

"Cool. There's supposed to be some college guys there, too, so... There's gonna be alcohol."

"Okej." Skwisgaar had never drank before. But he was a grown man, living on his own and everything, so it was probably about time he did. His mother always told him that he shouldn't drink, but she was such a hypocrite about what was right and wrong. It pissed Skwisgaar off.

"So, hey, would it be cool if I crash at your place tonight?" Rick asked. "Don't want my mom to catch me drinking and shit. I wanna get wasted tonight."

"Probablies fin," Skwisgaar mumbled.

"Cool, man, thanks. We'll come pick you up at like nine, okay? Marcus' friend is driving."

"Ja," Skwisgaar agreed. "Hej, Rick."

"What's up?"

"I never goes to party before."

He could practically hear Rick break into a grin through the phone. "Oh, man. We're gonna have some fun tonight, man."

\---

Yo came in the door about an hour after Skwisgaar got off the phone with Rick, his arms filled with grocery bags. Skwisgaar gave him a small nod in greeting and continued playing the song he was in the middle of. Yo nodded back to him and went straight over to the kitchen area, setting all the bags down carefully on the counter. He started to unload them, laying out all kinds of weird things that Skwisgaar presumed were foods, but none of it looked familiar to him.

Despite his curiosity, he didn't speak until he finished the song.

"What that stuffs you gets all of?"

"Osechi ryouri," Yo answered, and Skwisgaar just stared evenly at him, waiting for a real answer. Idiot knew he couldn't speak his language. "It is what we eat for Shougatsu."

That one at least was a word that was familiar to Skwisgaar, because Yo had been referring to New Year's as 'Shougatsu' for the past month. It was apparently a big deal in Japan. He had written New Year's cards to about a million people, which Skwisgaar thought was a waste of time he could probably have spent working on guitar. But he gave one to Skwisgaar, too. Skwisgaar wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about it.

"You gets lot of foods there," he commented, sounding bored. Was he maybe planning on having people over?

"Mm. Maybe I get too much," he agreed. "Would you like to have New Year's feast with me tomorrow?"

Skwisgaar felt a little awkward suddenly. Things had been kind of strained since Christmas when Yo had caught Jeremy using his guitar. They hadn't really talked much since then, mostly because Skwisgaar knew he had been in the wrong. He didn't really want to apologise.

"Ja, okay," he said quietly, and began busying himself with scales on his fretboard. Yo just nodded and turned back to the food he was organising on the countertop. The two were silent for some time, other than the sounds of an unplugged guitar and the crinkling of bags and packaging.

"Hej, Yo," Skwisgaar said with a sigh, finally. 

"Yes?" 

"You does something tonight with friend for New Year's Eve?" 

Yo turned and looked at him as if confused, but he was considering it. Skwisgaar couldn't really read him, but he knew that Yo had been pretty homesick or something recently. Skwisgaar kind of understood, but even though he longed a little bit for holidays that were familiar to him, there was no way he would rather be home with just his mother than here, playing guitar and exploring a new city and new music and learning what life was like for normal teenagers who had real families.

"No," Yo finally told him, looking uncomfortable. "Are you?"

"Ja," Skwisgaar said, allowing himself to feel just a little bit smug about it for a moment. After all, Yo had been the one making all the friends. "I goes to party tonight."

"Ah, sou." Yo said, clearly trying to pretend he didn't care. Skwisgaar could see right through him, though. He was jealous. And yet...

He couldn't help feeling a little bad, especially because of the recent tension.

"You, eh, wants to... comes with too?"

Skwisgaar wasn't sure it was okay to invite him without asking Rick or anything, but he said it was going to be a big party, so it was probably okay. 

"I can come?"

"Ja, probablies," Skwisgaar said, shrugging. "Ams big celebrakeshuns I guess so." 

"Okay, I will come." Yo smiled. "Thank you."

Skwisgaar wasn't really sure this was a good idea, but... if Yo was going to go through the trouble of cooking a special New Year's meal and sharing it with Skwisgaar, it was the right thing to do. His mother would say that, anyway.

That afternoon, Yo spent about two hours on speaker phone talking to his family members while he worked at preparing food, though, and the constant chatter started to irritate Skwisgaar so much that he almost began regretting his decision to invite him along.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December, 1988.

There was a knock at his door at 9:13. Skwisgaar had been keeping watch of the clock since about 8:30. Although he was just going to hang around with his friend like had become normal, he couldn't help feeling nervous about it. New experiences were rough on him, as much as it embarrassed him to admit even to himself. Usually he was able to push himself through it, insisting in his head that if he was a real man, he'd be able to do anything on his own, but his stomach would still clench up tight like a fist strangling his guts. So he'd been waiting, watching the clock and waiting, and once the clock made it to two minutes past nine he started to have misgivings. Yo made a comment of disgust about how punctuality was important or something, but that didn't make Skwisgaar feel any better.

But at 9:13 the knock finally came, and there was Rick right outside his door. 

"Hej," Skwisgaar said, putting on a pretty good act of nonchalance as he faced his friend. 

"Hey, man," Rick said. "Ready to go?"

"Ja, I ams, but gots quick questions."

"Yeah?"

"Yo can comes to with us?" Yo appeared behind him, peering over Skwisgaar's shoulder to give him a bit of a shy wave. Rick looked conflicted for just barely a moment, but then he shrugged.

"Gonna be tight in the car, but the more the merrier, huh? C'mon, they're waiting." Rick turned to head down the staircase and Skwisgaar grabbed his jacket from just inside the door, Yo following down behind them.

The three of them piled into the back seat of a rusty blue car that both looked and sounded as if it had seen better days, Skwisgaar stuck in the middle seat, despite his legs being the longest of the three. Marcus' friend nodded to them, looking back at them in the rearview mirror, and Marcus turned around in his seat.

"Hey, who's your friend?"

"Hello," Yo said eagerly. "My name is Yo Hirokawa, I am roommate with Skwisgaar. Please to meet you."

"What's up," Marcus said, clearly put off by Yo's formality, and turned back to face the front. 

"Hey, so how many people are gonna be at this thing?" Rick asked.

"Dude, pretty much everyone's gonna be there," Marcus said. "A lot of jocks and shit, though, so don't do anything embarrassing, you hear me?"

"C'mon, man, you know I'm cool!" Rick protested. 

"How are parties like in America?" Yo asked, butting into the conversation. Skwisgaar shifted uncomfortably, simultaneously wishing he wasn't stuck in this seat between the two of them and wishing that he hadn't invited Yo to tag along.

"You'll see soon enough, man," Marcus' friend said from the driver's seat.

 

They parked about two blocks away from where the party was and met up with Jared, Carrie, Becka, and the guy who sat at the lunch table with them whose name Skwisgaar was pretty sure he had never actually heard before. It felt better, a lot less awkward, and his nervousness melted off him once he was amongst his friends. Marcus and his friend walked ahead of them, though, as if they were too good for them because they were older, and Rick made a comment about it, but it honestly didn't matter much.

They approached a house that had music blasting from it and people spilling out from the front door onto the porch and Skwisgaar had never seen anything like it, except maybe in a movie. He didn't feel comfortable, but he was with other people, people that maybe he could call friends.

As they went through the font door, they were mostly ignored except for a few strange looks for a couple people who looked much older. Rick and Jared seemed to know a person or two, but it wasn't until Marcus ran into someone who seemed to be whoever lived in this house that they were greeted and welcomed in.

"Heyyyyy! None of you have drinks in your hands, get some drin- Hey, someone get these guys some fuckin' drinks!"

They made their way to the kitchen, but Skwisgaar realised that they had already lost part of their group in the crowd. Rick was still by his side, and Yo, and that guy whose name he wasn't sure of, but the others had disappeared. 

There were a bunch of people in the kitchen doing something that Skwisgaar didn't understand, bouncing a ball into cups, but the guy Marcus knew who maybe lived there told them, "Guys, clear offa here, hold up, we gonna set up some shots! Who wants in? Shots!"

Skwisgaar was overwhelmed. There were too many people and they were all very drunk and speaking a language he didn't fully understand or speak, all of them saying so many things at the same time. He couldn't understand anything, couldn't make sense of any of it, and it made him uncomfortable. When he looked around, he realised he'd lost Yo as well. But the guy was pouring liquor into little glasses, and Rick handed one to Skwisgaar, grinning.

"Cheers, man," Rick said, and Skwisgaar heard that well enough, so when Rick put the little cup to his lips, Skwisgaar drank down his own, trying to do it as fast as Rick did. It burned his throat and he coughed, only getting half of the little glass down, and he wanted to set it down and forget about it and never drink again. It tasted like crap! But everyone else here could do it, and Skwisgaar was a man. He would do it, too. So he forced the rest down his throat, and Rick gave him what he could only guess was a congratulatory punch on the shoulder.

That was just the beginning.

Another shot was handed to him, Skwisgaar wasn't even sure by who. He drank it, and then another one, and by the time the third one had hit his stomach, he found himself feeling strange like he had never felt before. They gave him something else, a whole glass of something, and when he took a sip it tasted sweet, much more pleasant than the shots, so he drank it down like water. 

The music was drowning out the hum of drunken conversations, and that was what Skwisgaar was focusing on when he realised Rick was gone, too. The house was thick with bodies, so much so that Skwisgaar had a hard time even leaving the kitchen, but now that he was alone, he felt like he needed to find someone. He didn't know anyone, but strangely, that thought didn't make him as uncomfortable as it had when he had first come in.

He wandered through the thick of it for a while, halfheartedly trying to find his friends, but eventually he found he had to use the bathroom, suddenly and badly. 

"Hej," he said to the first person he came across, only to be ignored. " _Hej._ " Skwisgaar tapped him on the shoulder, and the guy turned around confused. "Var är toilet?" he asked, having a hard time getting his brain to translate. The guy just shrugged at him and shrugged his hand off his shoulder, so Skwisgaar walked away, finding himself stumbling a little bit as he did.

He asked a girl, then, who pointed him down the hallway, and when he made it through the crowd to what was supposedly the bathroom, he found it locked. Skwisgaar tried to push the door open anyway. 

"Hey, fuck off! Someone's in here!" a voice called from inside.

"Dude, go use the one upstairs," someone said from behind him. Skwisgaar nodded blankly, his brain catching up to him a moment later, and he tried to find the staircase again. The colours of everything seemed to have changed some, like they'd been diluted. His tongue felt too big in his mouth. But he made it upstairs, and he started to open every door along the upstairs hallway, finding mostly bedrooms and closets, not all of which were unoccupied.

When he finally found the bathroom he let himself in and stood at the toilet, putting one hand on the wall in front of him to steady himself. For some reason, it was hard to aim.

There was a sound behind him as he was finishing up, and he turned back to look over his shoulder, but at the same time he heard, "Skwisgaar? Heyyy, Skwisgaar!"

"Carrie... Hej," Skwisgaar said, but for some reason there was no embarrassment about being walked in on in the bathroom. 

"Are you using the bathroom? Oh, I'm so sorry," she was laughing a lot, a little too much, but she leaned back on the door to close it, shutting both of them inside. 

"Ja," Skwisgaar said, fumbling to tuck himself back into his jeans, but he ended up leaving them unzipped, forgetting about them.

"Are you having fun at the party?" Carrie asked, leaning a bit on the edge of the counter as she sidled up to him. 

"Ja, you knows, I never bes at.... uh, ones, afore now, so..." 

Carrie laughed more. "Skwisgaar, your accent is really hot..." Before he knew what was happening, she had her hands on his hips, and she was leaning up, leaning up on her toes a bit and she pushed her lips against his. Skwisgaar's eyes widened for just a second, but it felt nice so he went with it, and she leaned in, pressing up against him with her whole body. 

For only a second, he wasn't sure what to do with his hands, but he couldn't worry about it, he didn't have time to worry about it, his hands just fell to her waist, touching the skin under the edge of her shirt.

"Thanks you," he told her awkwardly when she pulled her lips from his, pretty sure he was supposed to say that for the compliment, but she giggled and wormed a hand between them.

"I've been wanting to tell you that for a while now," she said, smirking, and he didn't get it. Why didn't she just tell him, then? But suddenly that was the least important thing in his mind, because her hand was moving into his open jeans, her fingers touching his dick, and Skwisgaar started to get hard really quickly.

"Vad gör du?" he mumbled, startled, but quickly deciding he didn't care. She had her whole hand wrapped around his dick, started moving it up and down. Skwisgaar nearly whimpered from the way it felt, totally nothing like it felt when he did it himself. 

"Do you have a condom?" she asked him, and he just stared at her for a second as if the word didn't make sense, but no, he knew the word, it just....

He shook his head blankly. It had never occurred to him to carry one.

"Oh... I have one in my purse, hang on," she said, giving him a good squeeze that left his knees buckling for a moment before she let go, looking around. "Oops, I think I left it downstairs," she said, looking kind of confused. "Oh well, who cares..."

Carrie started to pull off her shirt, and in a moment of clarity, Skwisgaar leaned over and clicked the lock on the door. And then he helped her take off her bra.

"Have you done this before?" she asked, but his fingers were touching her breasts and he couldn't give much of an answer except for a quick shake of his head. She laughed again, then, but before he could question her, she boosted herself up to sit on the countertop. Skwisgaar leaned in to kiss her again, and she squirmed, getting her panties down from under her skirt while he did so.

"It's easy, okay?" she told him, grinning sloppily, and pulled him so he was situated between her parted legs. "Just..." a hand reached down between them, grabbing a little too roughly onto his cock, and she guided it. "...like this..."

Carrie slid forward a little bit then, but that was enough, because the tip of Skwisgaar's dick was surrounded in wet heat, and all he could think of was getting more of it. He pushed forward further, unable to figure out the leverage for a second, but he grabbed onto her butt with his hands, pulling their bodies together, and Skwisgaar couldn't help but make a sound. It was drowned out by the way that Carrie moaned, the way she wrapped her legs around his thighs.

"Just... pull out, okay? Unngh, when y-you're going to come," she told him as he started to move. He nodded vaguely, only half understanding, and started to haphazardly rock his body against hers. Nothing in his life had ever felt so good. 

He kept moving, feeling like he was having some kind of out of body experience. He wasn't really focusing on her at all anymore, just about how good she felt on his cock. Skwisgaar had little notice that she was going to pull back, pull herself off of his dick, and lean over into the sink and vomit. 

Shocked and feeling suddenly a lot more sober, he took a step back, watching her heaving, and he didn't understand, but when she was done, she had tears on her face, and Skwisgaar wasn't really that interested in what his dick was doing anymore. The sounds of the party came alive again around him, as if they'd been muted from the time the bathroom door closed behind her.

"You's okay...?" he asked, trying to sound gentle. Had he done something to her with his dick? He didn't understand.

"I'm so drunk," she told him, a small sob breaking her sentence in two. "G-go away, I don't want you to see-- this is so embarrassing..."

"Hej," Skwisgaar started, attempting comfort.

"Get out!" she yelled at him suddenly, and Skwisgaar fumbled with the lock on the door, doing as she said. He didn't zip his pants back up until he got into the hallway. He had never been more confused in his life.

In a daze, Skwisgaar wandered back down the stairs. A cheer rose up from another room, and there were the strange sounds of noisemakers adding a layer over the music. When he found where everyone was, they were gathered around a TV set. He realised Jared was just in front of him, his arm around Becka's waist.

"Hej," he said to them, trying to get their attention over the din.

"Dude, you missed the ball drop!" Jared said to him when he noticed him.

"Skwisgaar! Happy New Year!" Becka said to him, grinning widely.

He had missed it...? Skwisgaar... had been looking forward to seeing that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January, 1989.

When Skwisgaar woke up, he wasn't sure where he was or how he had gotten to where he was. His tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth and everything tasted like the dried remains of rotten potatoes. But he was comfortable where he lay, so he must be home. 

Skwisgaar barely had time to contemplate it when the shrill sound of a ringing telephone made him jerk upright, fumbling to snatch it from the nightstand to shut it up. The noise was terrible, and he was realising quickly that the light outside of his blanket was terrible as well.

"Hallå," he grumbled into the phone, ducking back under the safety of his covers.

" _Skwisgaar? Are you just now waking up?_ " 

Skwisgaar closed his eyes, rolling over into a ball under the blanket. He didn't want to talk to his mother right now. He'd sent her a holiday card! Wasn't that enough?

" _Hi, mom. Yeah, it's early here, still._ " At least, he thought it was. He had no idea what the time was, but he knew it was six hours later in Sweden.

" _Well, I was just calling to wish you a Happy New Year,_ " she said. And oddly, it was a little comforting to hear her voice.

" _Thanks, mom... You, too._ " There was an awkward silence for a moment. Even in person, they were fairly quiet with one another, so talking on the phone was always awkward. " _You... doing okay over there?_ " 

Asking after his mother's well-being was way too awkward! If he were there in person, he would never ask. He would just know- she was his mother. But now he felt like he had to ask.

They had been through hard times, and she was supporting him now from far away...

He had to ask.

" _Skwisgaar, don't worry about your mother. I'm doing alright. The holidays weren't the same without you here, is all._ "

Skwisgaar fell quiet. He wasn't sure if she was trying to make him feel guilty, but he was feeling it regardless.

" _You're having fun, right?_ " 

" _Yeah,_ " he admitted. " _I went to a big American New Year's Eve party last night._ "

" _See, you're making friends and everything._ "

" _Yeah, I guess._ " He heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and peeked out from the corner of his blanket. Rick was walking out of the bathroom. Right, Rick had planned to sleep here tonight... " _Thanks for calling, but... it's expensive, right? So I'll let you go. Go watch the New Year's Concert for me, okay?_ "

" _Stay out of trouble, Skwisgaar,_ " his mother told him, agreeing. " _We'll speak again soon._ "

As Skwisgaar hung up, he felt a little bit guilty. Staying out of trouble was probably the last thing he had done last night. 

He reached out from the covers to hang up the receiver and looked up, vaguely confused, at Rick. 

"God morgon," he said.

"Talking to your mom?" Rick asked, sitting down a pile of blankets on the floor, where Skwisgaar presumed he had slept. 

"Ja, she calls to says to me 'gott nytt år', whats means the happy new year," Skwisgaar explained tiredly. "Hej, I doesn't remembers comes home."

Rick laughed and the sound of it made Skwisgaar's head throb. "Yeah, man, you were wasted. Not as bad as Yo, but..."

Skwisgaar looked around, having forgotten completely about Yo. He wasn't anywhere in the apartment. His flitted over to the clock, but it was pretty late into the morning already. Yo was always awake by now.

Questioningly, Skwisgaar pointed to the bunk above him.

"Yeah, man, he's up there. Out cold still, I think." Rick was grinning when he said that, like it was all funny. Skwisgaar didn't know what the joke was, though.

"Huh. He's, eh... okej, ja?" Not that Skwisgaar cared. They weren't really friends. Probably.

"Yeah, he'll be fine. Probably gonna have a killer hangover, but he'll be fine."

"Hangsover?" Skwisgaar asked, the word unfamiliar.

"Yeah, like after you drink too much, you get a headache and throw up and shit. It sucks. But it's worth it." 

"Hangsover," Skwisgaar muttered quietly, committing that one to memory. "Thinks I gots that one now."

A smirk spread across Rick's lips. "Drink some water, man. It'll help."

Skwisgaar groaned and pulled the blanket back up over his face. "In the whiles."

 

When Skwisgaar opened his eyes again, it was because of the sound of clumsy feet hitting the floor. He looked up to see Yo stumbling down from his bunk to the bathroom, and only moments later, the sound of vomiting. 

The same sound Carrie had made the night before. 

Skwisgaar had no idea how to feel about any of this. So, he wouldn't. His mother never felt anything about any of the men she slept with. It would be too complicated if she did since because she slept with so many men.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment after thinking that, erasing it viciously from his thoughts. 

Yo re-emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, staggering to the kitchen while clutching at his head. 

"You's hangs over," Skwisgaar told him, looking at him sleepy-eyed from the bed.

"Nn, futsukayoi," Yo said in what sounded like agreement. 

"The fuck did you just say?" Rick asked from where he was sprawled out on the floor. Skwisgaar glanced down at him, noticing that he was looking through one of Skwisgaar's guitar magazines. 

"He speak Japanska," Skwisgaar said to assure Rick that he didn't just misunderstand. 

"Means still drunk next day. Hangover," Yo explained, sounding tired. He started to fill up a water bottle with ice cubes, flinching at the sound of each one he dropped in.

"You drinks before, Yo?" Skwisgaar asked, curious. Yo didn't really seem the type.

"I drink a couple times back home," Yo said, filling the bottle with water from the tap. "But not like last night."

"Huh." Skwisgaar couldn't really believe that Yo had drank at such a young age. But he didn't really know what the drinking laws in Japan were, or whatever. He knew a lot of kids at his school back home had drank back home, but Skwisgaar never had really been exposed to it. There were times when they couldn't even eat; his mother didn't often keep alcohol in the house. "Hej, Yo. You brings me a little waters, too, huh?" Skwisgaar told him.

"Ask nice," Yo said, always complaining that Skwisgaar had bad manners. Whatever.

"Snälla," Skwisgaar muttered, and Yo laughed, and started to fill a glass for him.

"Y'all are crazy," Rick said, looking up from the magazine. 

Skwisgaar shrugged at him, finally sitting himself up in bed. The one thing he and Yo had going for him was that they both understood what it was like living somewhere nobody understood your mother tongue. Yo brought him his glass then sat down in the desk chair, rifling through the drawer for something. 

"Skwisgaar," he said before retriving a little bottle of pain relievers from the desk.

"Ja?" 

"I'm sorry, I promised I will make osechi ryouri for you. But I think I am too sick from alcohol," Yo told him, dumping a couple of pills into his hand. He then passed the bottle off to Skwisgaar.

"Doesn't feels like cooking?" Skwisgaar asked, accepting the pills gratefully. Yo had been really into the idea of making his New Year feast.

"I make it for us tomorrow. Rick, come also, please," Yo said apologetically. "Today we get pizza."

"I'm down with that," Rick agreed.

"Ja, okej."

It might be true that they both felt like crap today, but maybe the fun they had had last night had left them both feeling a little bit less homesick.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter, 1989.

The first day back to school after break was difficult. He had been hanging out with Rick and speaking English every day, but somehow it felt different when having to speak to his teachers. He felt clumsy with his words, completely out of practice. 

He realised he'd also been neglecting his guitar. Until recently, he spent all of his time playing it no matter what. Whether he was talking with Yo, whether he watched television, whatever. He always had his fingertips on the fretboard.

But while he hung out with Rick, that just wasn't the case, and it was something he wanted to change. 

Lunch the first day back was so busy with conversation that Skwisgaar felt a lot of it going over his head. He sat by quietly and half-listened as he chewed halfhearted bites of his hamburger, and by the end of the lunch period he'd realised something: it was no different than usual. He'd never said all that much to any of them, and he and Rick hasn't actually been friends for _that_ long, after all. Even if it felt like they had.

It was a little bit of a lonely feeling, but just before the next bell rang, Rick pressed a folded up piece of paper into Skwisgaar's palm and waved goodbye to him with a grin.

He unfolded the note as he trudged up the stairs toward his next class, but he smiled to himself when he read it. The bell rang before he managed to bring his body and his guitar into the classroom and the teacher lectured him, but Skwisgaar's brain only was half-attuned to the English words the teacher threw out at him.

He had no trouble understanding what Rick wrote, though. 

_Let's jam after class. I reserved practice room #22C._

Things were maybe a little different at lunch than they were during Christmas break, but the two of them were still cool.

\---

Skwisgaar showed up at 22C, sticking his head in the doorway a little nervously less than ten minutes after classes let out for the day. In all honesty, he'd been excited about the practice rooms and nothing else when he first toured the school, but until now, he'd never bothered using them except with the teacher who held his lesson in 61A every Tuesday and Thursday.

So Skwisgaar wasn't entirely sure what to expect when he went in, but it was just Rick sitting on the piano bench, facing away from the piano, rubbing the bell of his trumpet on the edge of his shirt.

"They gots the amps in here?" Skwisgaar asked, looking around in confusion as he stepped into the room, but he spotted it as soon as the words left his lips, and with a grin, shut the door tight behind him. They could be as loud as they wanted in here and play their fucking hearts out, huh?

He opened his gig bag and leaned his guitar on the empty stand in the corner, then started to pull out and unravel a cable for it.

"You, eh, you miss bes pals with me, ah?" Skwisgaar joked with Rick, but honestly, joking was still a bit hard for him in English. Rick seemed to get it, though.

""Yeah, man. I figure you need to play with someone other than Yo from time to time. Dude's so stuffy," Rick joked back.

"Ja, but boths you plays the jazz," Skwisgaar shot back, sounding bored. Rick would know better than to take it as an insult. Somehow, jazz seemed a lot cooler when Rick was playing it on his trumpet rather than Yo playing it on his guitar. Like maybe he felt it more.

That was way more important than the mastery of any theory, as far as Skwisgaar was concerned.

 

By time the two of them brought their jam to a halt, Skwisgaar was feeling much better about the day. Classes had sucked and his relationship with his friends had felt stunted, but playing together with Rick left him feeling better than he'd felt since Christmas evening.

"Too bad we doesn't has a drums guy," Skwisgaar commented as he coiled his cable back up. 

"We can probably find someone here," Rick said, plopping down on the piano bench to case up his trumpet. 

"Ja, maybes."

"Hey, uh, dude, can I ask you something?" Rick asked, just as Skwisgaar was about to throw his gig bag over his shoulder. Somehow, he didn't think this thing Rick was going to ask would be good. Just the sound of his voice or something.

"Ja, what's you wants?" Skwisgaar asked, eyebrow raised.

"You and Carrie, uhhh... you guys goin' out now?" Rick asked, not meeting Skwisgaar's eye.

"What means goesing out?"

"Like, you know... Like dating."

"Huh?" Skwisgaar was honestly confused, and even more confused about why Rick was acting so strange about it. "Why you thinks this... things?"

"Uh, I heard you guys, you know. You _did_ it." 

Skwisgaar just stared at him plainly, a few questions popping up in his mind. The most important one was _how did Rick find out?_ , but in close second was _why would that mean they were dating?_

\---

Partying became something of a hobby. It didn't happen overnight and it wasn't every day. Skwisgaar was still able to maintain several hours of guitar practice a day, along with whatever he was supposed to be studying outside of class. But during the next few weeks, he'd spent a great portion of his time exploring what he assumed was the typical life of an American teenager.

It was nothing like his life was like back home. 

Rick ended up sleeping on their floor frequently, frequently enough that one day while they were out with Yo, Yo took them to one of his Asian shopping places and showed him where we could get a little roll-up mattress to keep in their apartment.

He hadn't really spoken that much to Carrie since New Year's Eve, despite Rick's questions about her, his apparent concern. Skwisgaar didn't really answer anything regarding her. And since then, he'd found that it was very easy to get other girls, any girl, to do things with him at parties, though most of them just wanted to kiss and jerk him off with their hands. Skwisgaar was fine with that.

It felt good, and they were nobody to him. It wasn't complicated like it had seemingly become with Carrie. 

There was a girl one night, though, at a party that didn't even have alcohol. It was a party with just high school kids, just like him, and they were playing high school games. They were ones that Skwisgaar had never played before now, but he was learning pretty fast that 'spin the bottle' meant that he was going to get a lot of kisses, and 'seven minutes in heaven' meant he might get a little bit more. Sometimes they played 'truth or dare', and that could be exciting on occasion, but frequently it was pretty boring.

This was a high school party, and he found himself in a closet with a pretty girl with dark red hair. 

"You nervous?" she asked him, and it was obvious that she wasn't nervous at all.

"Noes," Skwisgaar told her coolly, "How much can happens seven minute?" His hands slid up her waist, up to her chest, and he brushed his thumb over where he had learned a girl's nipple would be, through her bra.

"Wanna find out?" she asked, mischievous. 

"Ja," he said honestly, and without a moment's hesitation, her fingers pulled his jeans open. He was expecting her to touch him, to get her hands all over his dick and look at it like it was something she'd never seen before, like maybe it was an alien. That's what the girls until that point had done, besides Carrie.

But she didn't do that. She looked at it for just a second and then she bent down. And he only realised when it started happening that she was putting her mouth on it.

It must have been seven minutes later when the door opened on them, and the people outside the door made an orchestra of sounds, some of shock and some of congratulations. Some that Skwisgaar couldn't identify, and he didn't care. Skwisgaar wasn't sure about whatever was going on out there, but they weren't done in here. He shoved the door closed and let her finish.

It only took a little bit longer than seven minutes.

 

When Skwisgaar did stumble out of the closet, he was in a little bit of a daze, enough so that whatever words were being spoken to him were the least important words on his mind. He left the basement and went upstairs, thinking that maybe he needed something. Water. Anything.

Another mouth on his dick, maybe. 

There were people upstairs in the kitchen and living room, and it was like a whole different universe, a whole different party. Rick spotted him when he walked through the living room the way to the kitchen and grabbed on his arm.

"Hey, man, where you been? You gotta meet these guys. Been tellin' 'em about you."

"Why abouts me?" Skwisgaar asked, brought out of his daze just to find himself in a cloud of confusion.

"You're the guitarist?" a guy sitting next to Rick asked. He had a mohawk, a real one. Skwisgaar had never seen one in real life before. "The one from Sweden?"

"Ja, I plays the guitar," Skwisgaar admitted, lost. 

"You any good?" the guy next to the mohawk guy asked, leaning forward in his seat like he was trying to get a good look at him. Skwisgaar stared back at him; if he wanted to look at him, here was his face. He could take a good look.

"Ja, probablies."

"Dude, he's the best. Don't be modest, man," Rick encouraged him. "Tell these guys how good you are."

Skwisgaar said nothing, not really understanding. Yeah, he was pretty good, but saying it in words wasn't going to prove anything to them. And he wasn't really sure why he needed to prove anything in the first place.

"Why you asks these to me?"

"Our guitarist quit," a girl piped up from beside them. She had bright pink hair, yet Skwisgaar hadn't noticed her until that moment. "We're looking for a new one.

"Yeah. And we only want the best." That was the mohawk guy. 

Skwisgaar didn't really get it, though. What, these guys were... a band?


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February-March, 1989.

Skwisgaar lounged on Rick's bed, fingers flying quietly over the frets of his guitar to match up to the high-pitched music coming from the television as Rick played Castlevania on his NES.

"That sounds pretty cool on guitar," Rick idly commented. Skwisgaar grunted vaguely in response; did Rick even know how good it would sound plugged in? He wasn't a guitarist, so maybe not.

"Hey," Rick said, as if just remembering, "did you meet up with that band from that party last week?"

"Nej."

"You didn't like 'em?"

"They doesn't calls to me," Skwisgaar said, bitterness welling up in his chest. He thought they were going to call him. It had seemed like they were interested in him, but he hadn't had his guitar with him, so there had been no real way to prove how good he was. But on that line of thought, he ended up wondering why he felt the need to prove himself to those guys. He'd just barely met them. They hadn't proven themselves to _him_. It seemed awfully one-sided.

But they had the power in this situation. They were already a _band_ , and Skwisgaar was just a guitarist.

But they didn't even play metal! Why should it matter to him if they didn't want him in their stupid band?

"The hell, man, really? They didn't call?" Rick asked, and his disbelief made Skwisgaar feel some vague sense of comfort. 

"Ja, they doesn't. Pfft, it piss me of." Rick entered a new screen in the game and the music changed, giving Skwisgaar a little bit of a challenge to keep up.

"Maybe they lost your number or something," Rick shrugged. 

"He writes on his hand, how you loses the hand?" Skwisgaar scoffed.

"Dunno, man, maybe he washed it or something."

Skwisgaar made a sound of agreement, but then realised that Rick had a smirk on his face. "Pfft, fucks you, too."

Whatever. It just showed what a crappy band they were if they didn't want Skwisgaar in it.

\---

Skwisgaar had almost put the band that thought he wasn't good enough out of his mind entirely by time the phone rang. It was ringing as he walked into his apartment after school one day, and he would have missed it entirely if he had jammed with Rick after like they had planned, yet he still took the time to lay his guitar across his bed before reaching for the receiver. 

"Hålla," he said into the phone, distracted. 

"Hey! You're the guy from that party, right? Uh, Swiskaar...?" said the voice on the other end. Skwisgaar was mildly annoyed, but he'd nearly grown used to people mangling the pronunciation of his name by now.

"Ja, _Skwisgaar_ ," he corrected.

"Oh, my bad. Anyway, hey. This is Adrien."

Skwisgaar considered that for a moment, but he wasn't sure he remembered any of those guys' names.

"Them's singers, ja?"

"Yep." That was the mohawked guy, then. Adrien. Okay. "So, hey, we got a gig booked and we still need a guitarist. Thought we'd give you a little try out."

"Tries out?" Skwisgaar asked, uncertain. "Whats means that?" Talking on the phone in English was always harder than talking in person. It was harder to hear and impossible to figure things out by body language. It was one thing with Rick, since they'd gotten kind of close, but it was a bit stressful with a total stranger.

"Yeah, like an audition? Play with us and see if we like playing with you."

"Oh." The notion that he had to actually audition was kind of absurd to Skwisgaar. He was the best guitarist he knew. He was sure their band couldn't be _that_ good if their old guitarist quit on them. "Ja, sound goods."

"Cool. Come over tonight, then. My place."

What if he had had plans or something? Skwisgaar thought this guy was being very forward. But it was exactly what he wanted to do, at least more than anything else he could be doing that night, so he jumped at the chance.

"Ja, where's you lives, then?" He grabbed a pen to write down the address as Adrien gave it to him, but he just stared at it, totally unfamiliar. Was he supposed to know where this was?

"How's I gets to there?"

"Just take the subway. We'll see you at like eight then, okay?"

"Ja," Skwisgaar agreed, hanging up, still at a total loss to where this place was.

About thirty minutes later, Yo walked in the door and Skwisgaar looked up at him from the bed where he was sitting and playing, nervousness seeping out of him.

"Hej, you knows how to rides on the subways, ja?"

"Un," Yo said in agreement, taking off his shoes and putting down his bags. "You are going somewhere?"

"Ja, I gots the try scout," Skwisgaar told him. "For a bands. But ja, doesn't knows how to goes to the place."

Yo gave him a strange look that he couldn't quite read. "What does this mean?" he asked after a moment.

"You knows, like when the guy tells to you to join the band but doesn't know whats if you ams good enoughs or not goods enoughs. ...Buts I am."

"Mm. Where do you need to go?"

Skwisgaar scooted over to the edge of the bed and grabbed the scrap of paper onto which he'd jotted Adrien's address, then handed it to Yo. Yo looked it over, appearing puzzled, but then he opened the bottom drawer of the desk and withdrew a map, spreading out across the scarred wood finish. Skwisgaar set his guitar aside, then looked over Yo's shoulder. 

"What's this maps?"

"It is map for the train."

"I doesn't understand it," Skwisgaar admitted, staring at it blankly. 

"I will help find the way to go," Yo said, and for once, Skwisgaar was actually really glad that he lived with Yo.

\---

Skwisgaar left his apartment far too early out of fear of getting lost, and although he did get turned around a few times, he still found himself at the address scribbled on the paper nearly an hour early. 

He tried to kill time for a little bit by just walking around the block, but the neighbourhood seemed kind of dangerous, or something. Skwisgaar had never been to a place where he felt more uncomfortable. A guy started walking close behind him at one point and he was worried about the safety of the guitar on his back, so even knowing that he was still early, he rounded that block and made his way back to the house. It was a house, kind of. It was attached to other houses on either side of it and the outside looked a bit dirty, like it had been forgotten about. Most of the neighbourhood seemed to look that way, though.

Skwisgaar went right up to the door, checking the address again just to make sure, but then he rang the bell. That guy who had been following him lingered for a few moments at the curb, but eventually wandered away before the door opened for Skwisgaar. 

It only opened, though, after he finally rang the bell a second time, and the mohawked guy appeared at the door. Adrien.

"Hej," Skwisgaar greeted him.

"Hey, come on in," Adrien said, stepping back.

"Sorry whats I be early some," Skwisgaar told him, looking around as he walked inside. The thin carpet under his feet was torn in spots, and a glance into the kitchen showed dirty dishes piling over the sink. 

"Nah, no worries, Anabelle's already here. We're workin' on lyrics downstairs, c'mon."

Skwisgaar grunted in agreement and followed Adrien down a short hallway. They got to a living room where a woman was passed out on the couch in front of a television set she clearly wasn't watching, dirty cups and silverware and empty bottles littering the coffee table in front of the couch. Adrien seemed to notice him staring.

"Don't worry 'bout her," he dismissed, his voice short, and he led Skwisgaar through a door and down a flight of stairs.

The basement was an entirely different world than the one in the upper portion of the house. It was haphazardly but stylistically carpeted with various mismatching rugs, it was well-lit, and the walls were slathered with posters of bands. Beanbag chairs scattered the perimeter, but the main focus was gear, and Skwisgaar felt right at home immediately. 

"Hi, Skisgar," Anabelle said from one of the beanbags, her legs curled up in it with her. 

"Hej. Anabelles?" he asked, uncertain. "It's _Skwisgaar_."

Anabelle shrugged. "It's _A-FACE_."

"Tyler'll be here soon, s'just he has training 'til 7:00," Adrien told him, and plopped down onto a beanbag chair near Anabelle. 

"Training?" Skwisgaar asked, and started to pull his guitar from his gigbag, unsure of what to do with himself. Nobody was really telling him what to do. But he knew he was here to play guitar, so that was easy enough.

"Oh, you can plug in over there," Adrien pointed to an amp. "Yeah, he plays baseball. He's still in high school."

Skwisgaar got plugged in, then helped himself to the beanbag closest to the amp, his guitar in his lap and ready. His fingers were already fiddling with the frets, though, so he turned himself down in order to talk.

"So how we does this try scout?"

"I guess we can have you play some stuff that we cover sometimes for our shows, see how it goes," Adrien said. "You know any of Circle Jerks' stuff?"

Skwisgaar just stared.

"No? Really? What about Minor Threat?"

Skwisgaar shook his head.

"You gotta know The Misfits, at least, right?"

"Ja, maybe a little," Skwisgaar said, grateful to finally latch onto something. In all honesty, he only really knew the name. He was sure he'd listened to them a little bit at some point, but he couldn't think of what their music really sounded like.

"Awesome, which songs can you play?" Adrien asked eagerly.

Skwisgaar was starting to think maybe this had been a bad idea. "I doesn't really knows that well, actually..."

"Skwisgaar, what kind of music do you play?" Anabelle interjected suddenly, her eyes honing in on what his fingers were doing.

"I plays metals," he admitted.

"Metal?" Adrien asked, looking vaguely horrified. "Like what kind of metal, like glam pussy shit?"

"Ja, I plays all the kind," Skwisgaar told him, unashamed. "Even them metals for the ladies, they gots pretty good guitars sometimes."

"Can you play Queensryche? Or Iron Maiden? Metallica?" Anabelle asked eagerly.

"Ja, I knows all thems stuff," Skwisgaar said casually, feeling more relaxed now that he was back in familiar territory.

She grabbed a pair of sticks from where they lay on floor next to her.

"Awesome, then. No problem. Let's jam," she said, and headed to the drum kit.


	12. Chapter 12

They were in the middle of the guitar solo of 'Nightrain' when the band's bassist came slinking down the basement steps in uniform, a long-necked gigbag strapped over his shoulder along with a bag from which a baseball bat protruded at one end. Skwisgaar hardly looked up, just made eye contact in greeting, but when the guy dropped his baseball bag at the bottom of the steps and started to plug his bass into an amp, Anabelle quit playing on him altogether, so Skwisgaar had no choice but to follow suit and fade to silence.

"Sounds pretty good," the bassist commented when Skwisgaar's fingers finally paused. 

"Thanks you," Skwisgaar said, already well-aware. 

"Ty, you think you can teach him Aric's parts?" Adrien said from the sidelines, where he'd been watching the show in his beanbag chair.

"We going with him, then?" Tyler asked as he slung his bass strap over his shoulder.

"For now," Adrien said with a shrug. "The gig'll be his real audition."

Skwisgaar wrinkled his nose a bit when he heard that, but said nothing. Still, they'd heard him play all this, but they still didn't know whether or not he was good enough? He was really good, wasn't he? No, he knew he was. That was why it didn't make sense. 

"Now that Tyler's here, we should run through the set," Anabelle suggested.

"You guys already picked the songs?" Tyler asked, plucking a vague haphazard melody as they chatted. 

"Yeah, I mean mostly," Adrien shrugged. "Let's do it. Hey, Skwisgaar, you can just chill for now, relax and check out some of our songs."

Skwisgaar didn't understand, though. They were all going to play their songs? Without having a guitarist play at all? Was that even possible? A bit disgruntled, he seated himself on one of the beanbags as Adrien got up from his. 

"Jump in if you can," Tyler said to him, smiling just a bit- kindly. But Skwisgaar wasn't really sure what to make of music without guitar.

Adrien grabbed a mic and switched on some of his gear, but Skwisgaar didn't really know about or care about the set up of a vocalist. He was more interested in what the two of them who were actually playing instruments were doing. But it was boring! Totally boring without guitar. The bass was at least a little bit interesting, but not enough to keep Skwisgaar's attention.

He was already writing his own guitar parts in his head. 

He turned down his guitar a little, but when their first song passed through the bridge and rounded back to the chorus, Skwisgaar jumped in with what _he_ would play if it were his song.

Adrien stopped singing just a few words after Skwisgaar started playing, but he said nothing, so Skwisgaar didn't stop. The three of them kept playing, and Skwisgaar got to his feet, but Adrien just stared and Skwisgaar couldn't read him, couldn't tell if he was annoyed or impressed, and he didn't care. Playing with other people felt amazing, he realised, and it wasn't perfect- he didn't even know the song. But even this brand of imperfection felt better than playing something perfect and rehearsed alone in his room.

They faded out after a few minutes, after the point where Skwisgaar lost track of whether or not they were even playing the same song they'd started out with.

"I'm glad Anabelle convinced me to give you a chance," Adrien finally said after an awkward moment.

"Convinxed?" Skwisgaared asked, raising an eyebrow. 

"Well, you're young," Adrien said with a shrug. "Kind of too young, you know?"

"But Tyler's not that much older," Anabelle added with a grin, idly tapping the pedal of her kick drum.

"Yeah, anyway. Ty! Teach this kid the songs, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah. I can handle it, boss," Tyler assured him, giving him a little sarcastic salute. 

"You got a week, Skwis," Adrien said to him. "Prove me right, yeah?"

\---

Skwisgaar looked up from his bed when his guitar suddenly went quiet, his amp buzzing. Yo was standing next to it with the cord in his hand, glaring at Skwisgaar. Honestly, Yo had been complaining to him for about twenty minutes, but Skwisgaar had completely tuned him out.

"Puts that back unsides there," Skwisgaar instructed with irritation, still playing as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. His guitar was suddenly far too quiet, though.

"It is my turn to practice," Yo insisted, dropping the cable on the floor. "You know this. I play this time every day!"

"I gots the gigs in a weeks, you knows this, too," Skwisgaar shot back. "You doesn't ever dos nothings with you's play, why you gots to practice so much, ah?" 

Yo's face twisted up a little, but he turned away from Skwisgaar and turned on his own amp, grabbing his guitar from its stand. 

"I practice now," Yo insisted, ignoring Skwisgaar's glare. Skwisgaar found himself wondering why the school thought it was a good idea to make two guitarists share a room, but that only led to wondering why they ever let a guitarist as crappy and boring as Yo ever enroll in the first place.

"Pfft, doesn't knows why," Skwisgaar taunted him. "Not likes you gets no better evers."

"You act like you so great, but if you so perfect, why you even have to practice?" Yo was so angry, his characteristic careful manner of speech disintegrated. "Not even good to play punk? Not like guitar for it hard!"

On his own guitar, Yo began to mimic the song that Skwisgaar had been playing repeatedly for the past hour, staring him down with a venomous look painted on his face. "See? Easy."

"Ha. You thinks I wants to plays lives so sloppy like whats you does there? Pfft." Skwisgaar got to his feet, throwing his guitar into a gigbag. There were still practice rooms open at school, and he wasn't about to let Yo ruin his first live.

It had to be perfect. _He_ had to be perfect.

 

When Skwisgaar got to school, he stopped at a pay phone on the first floor. He hated talking on the phone to people he didn't know well so the idea gave him pause, but he dug from the pocket of his gigbag some coins and a folded scrap of paper on which his potential new bandmates' phone numbers were scribbled. He was nervous as he dialed, and when someone picked up the other end, it was a woman's voice in his ear.

"I talks to Tyler? Eh, please," he added as an afterthought. 

"One sec," the woman said, and he heard the sound of the phone being set on a hard surface, but it wasn't far enough away to drown out a loud cry of the bassist's name. 

"Hello?" came a few moments later, and it was a slightly more familiar voice.

"Hej, this ams Skwisgaar Skwigelf speaking," Skwisgaar told him, feeling stupid and awkward and shit, and he knew this was a bad idea. "Can you comes to my school? We works on the songs tonight."

"Uh... I just got home from practice, still have to shower and do homework," Tyler hedged. 

Skwisgaar frowned, confused. He was in a band, wasn't he? Why did he care about those kinds of things? "These thing ams more important to then music?"

There was a pause. Then, a sigh. "Yeah, you're right. I'm on my way, okay?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> March, 1989.

Skwisgaar didn't go to class the day of the show. He'd woken from a strange dream at five in the morning, stomach upset and chest clenching so tightly that he found it impossible to return to sleep. When Yo woke up and made breakfast, Skwisgaar just laid in bed and watched him, and when Yo left for class, giving him an odd look before he did, Skwisgaar still hadn't moved from bed.

Once the apartment was empty, Skwisgaar got up and used the bathroom. He thought about eating breakfast, but his stomach revolted at the mere idea, and instead, he went straight to his guitar.

He played all morning and his stomach was sick to the point where he thought he might have the flu, and then his stomach felt even worse. By time afternoon rolled around, though, he started to panic, afraid he might be late even though the gig didn't start for another six hours.

Skwisgaar made a thin broth just to force himself to eat something, but when he tried to return to practice after that, he found his hands shaking and concentration shattered. He packed his guitar into his gigbag and picked out what he would wear on stage. When he'd asked Adrien about stage clothes a few days earlier, Adrien just told him it wasn't punk to worry about what he was going to wear. That didn't stop Skwisgaar from worrying.

Yo came home after classes and gave Skwisgaar a look equally as strange as the one he'd given when he left in the morning, and although Skwisgaar ignored it, he couldn't help but realise that he needed to get out of the apartment. He couldn't sit around and hang out with Yo right now. He was going to be late. There were hours left until the gig, but he was going to be late.

He went to the closet and grabbed for his jacket.

"Now you are going out?" Yo asked.

"Ja."

"But you don't go to class today?" Confusion was evident on Yo's face. 

"Ja, doesn't worries 'bouts it," Skwisgaar dismissed. He grabbed his gigbag and slung the guitar over his shoulder. 

Yo was quiet for a moment, just watching him, but then he sighed, and as if under obligation, said, "Take care with your guitar. Weather is getting bad."

Skwisgaar raised an eyebrow, but just gave a simple nod in response. 

Next to the door, he shoved his feet into his boots, checked himself over once more in the mirror, and then turned the doorknob.

"Wish me lucks," he said simply, and left.

Cold drizzle leaked from a sky matted with dark clouds. Skwisgaar barely noticed as he made his way to the livehouse, and by time he got there, his hair was soaked to his shoulders and the back of his neck. The venue wasn't opened yet. His prospective bandmates weren't there. Skwisgaar sat on the sidewalk under the building's overhang and waited, fingers moving through fretting motions against his leg while the rain started to pour down harder around him.

Someone came to unlock the door after a while, but they paid him no mind. Others wandered in, and at a point, Skwisgaar got up and checked the door, but it was locked once again. It wasn't until a car slowed at the curb in front of him that Skwisgaar looked up. Anabelle climbed out of the front seat after kissing the driver's cheek, and flashed him a quick grin before opening the back door and pulling out a couple gear cases.

"Hey, Skwis! You're here early," she said, rushing into the overhang to avoid getting her gear wet. 

"Ja, I guess."

"The door's still locked?"

"I thinks so," he said. "Those guys go inside, though. But they still locks it."

"Did you tell them you were playing tonight?" she asked, looking almost amused.

"I never does this before, okay?" Skwisgaar snapped, a wave of irritation rushing through him, but it was gone as quickly as it came. 

"Yeah, yeah. C'mon, get up. Let's go in."

Anabelle knocked on the door, and after a moment, a guy inside answered and the two chatted briefly. Thunder began to rumble in the air, but the guy let them inside just as spears of lightning flashed behind their backs. Anabelle took her cases over to the stage, and Skwisgaar found out that one of them was carrying her snare and the other her cymbals. They weren't the only ones playing tonight, but they were on first, so she started to set up. Skwisgaar pulled his wet hair back into a ponytail and joined her. It wasn't long after that Adrien and Tyler came in, and they drowned out the sound of the storm outside with the sounds of their instruments as they warmed up.

 

Two hours later, the venue was dark and people were steadily trickling in. Most of them were buying drinks and talking to whoever they came in with, not paying much attention to the stage. Crappy music was playing from the speakers. It seemed few people noticed the mismatched group of punks coming out onto the stage. Adrien stepped up to the mic to introduce them, but the blood was rushing in Skwisgaar's ears and he heard nothing except for the thundering of his heart.

He nearly missed his cue to start, but he kept his hands steady, and fuck it all, _he_ was the guitarist. He was the one the crowd would hear.

Skwisgaar felt like he was in a fog. He felt detached, like he was in a dream, but it was far better than any dream he'd ever had. Adrenaline soaked his veins, and during the moments he dared to look, there were eyes on him from all around the livehouse. 

When they got offstage, Rick was there, grinning and clapping him on the back. Skwisgaar didn't even know he had come. Adrien re-appeared with drinks for all of them, even though none of them were technically old enough, and together, they watched the next set.

It was late when their little group stumbled out of the livehouse, Skwisgaar and Tyler both a little buzzed. The rain outside had all but stopped, but Anabelle insisted that Skwisgaar get a ride home with her regardless. Just before Adrien and Tyler went their own way, though, Adrien's hand clapped down on Skwisgaar's shoulder.

"Welcome to Fuckface Academy, kid."

 

Yo wasn't home when Skwisgaar got back to the apartment, but it wouldn't have mattered even if he was. Skwisgaar let his guitar slump back onto its stand then fell into bed, his body spent. He found he barely had the energy to take his hair, still damp with rain and sweat, out of its tie. He fell into a deep sleep and had strange dreams that didn't make any sense.

The sound of sizzling woke him some time later, and he rolled over to see Yo in the kitchen, making breakfast like he usually did. Sun was pouring in the windows. Skwisgaar groaned and stretched out, but he suddenly realised that he was starving, and still wearing the same clothes from last night.

" _God morgon_ ," he mumbled to Yo as he sat up, running his hand back through his hair. 

" _Ohayou,_ " Yo said to him in response, not even turning to look at him. 

"Will you makes for me the frukfast?" Skwisgaar asked.

"Mm. But you make dinner," Yo agreed. 

Satisfied, Skwisgaar got up and used the bathroom and washed his face to wake himself up. By time he re-emerged, breakfast was on their small table.

"Punk music here different than in Japan," Yo commented when Skwisgaar sat down across from him.

"You goes to the shows?" Tension had been running high as they fought for practice time, so Skwisgaar hadn't expected his roommate to care. He hadn't even told him where the venue was. 

Yo nodded, but didn't meet Skwisgaar's eye. "I go with Rick," he admitted. "Your band is okay. But later, I show you how you can make better."


	14. Chapter 14

After school, Skwisgaar skipped out on jamming with Rick and instead got straight on a train toward Adrien's place. Taking his guitar on the subway was always a little bit of an inconvenience- especially at that hour- but he hadn't wanted to stop off at the apartment, and besides, he was hoping that the others would be around to play together for a while. He wasn't sure if that was part of the plan or not. "Come by my place to get your cash tomorrow," was all Adrien had said to him when he called Skwisgaar's apartment last night, past midnight. The call had woken up Yo.

As always, Adrien's neighbourhood made him grip the strap of his gigbag a bit more tightly, but nobody bothered him outright on his path to Adrien's doorstep. After ringing the bell, there wasn't an answer for so long that Skwisgaar began contemplating whether or not he should leave, whether he should have gotten more information from Adrien last night before hanging up the phone. He'd made it sound as though he would be around all day, like heading over any time was fine.

Just as Skwisgaar turned to go, the inside door swung open with a creak. It wasn't Adrien, though. It was a lady he'd seen at his house a couple of other times, but she had been asleep or just sort of unaware. Adrien never really said anything about her or even spoke to her, not in front of Skwisgaar, and Skwisgaar didn't ask.

She was just staring at him, though, looking suspicious. 

"Eh... Adrien am home?" he asked, realising suddenly that his heart was thundering in his chest between her scrutinizing stare and his own insecurities over his English.

The woman tilted her head to the side, and Skwisgaar worried that maybe she didn't understand him, but just as he was about to repeat himself, she reached up toward the screen door and slid a lock, pushing it open toward him. Uncertain, he stepped inside; the place looked just as depressing as ever. She said nothing further to him but he followed her further in regardless, then pushed open the door to the basement.

" _Adrien!_ " she shrieked down the staircase. Her arm brushed Skwisgaar's as she turned away, and he watched her retreat to another room, slamming the door behind her.

Adrien came stomping up the stairs, one hand on the railing and one hand holding a book, his thumb pressed between the pages. His initial confusion turned to epiphany when he saw Skwisgaar waiting awkwardly at the top of the stairs. 

"Skwisgaar, hey." Adrien held out his hand for one of the strange half-handshakes Skwisgaar saw American guys doing a lot, and he tried his best to replicate it, but he wasn't sure he fully succeeded.

"Hej. You says comes to gets the money?" Skwisgaar hedged, realising he'd never hung out with just Adrien before. It was becoming clear that neither Tyler nor Anabelle was around. 

"Oh, yeah, c'mon." Adrien lead Skwisgaar through the doorway next to the one that lady had gone through into what Skwisgaar could only assume was Adrien's bedroom. It was small and messy, just like the rest of the upstairs. He pulled a cord to turn on a ceiling light, set his book down on the bed on its pages to keep his place, and then pulled open his closet door. Inside was a narrow chest of drawers. Adrien got to his knees and from the bottom drawer pulled a wooden box out from underneath a pile of clothes. He fished a keyring from his pocket then slid one inside, turning it, and once opened, Skwisgaar could see a few wads of the now-familiar green paper of American money inside the box.

Adrien got back to his feet, counting it out once quickly, then once more. And then he handed several bills to Skwisgaar.

"Kind of a small payout this time, but the gigs'll get bigger." 

"Thanks you," Skwisgaar said, unsure if that was appropriate or not- he was being paid for a job, more or less, right?- and as he tucked the cash into a zipper pocket of his gigbag, Adrien locked up his box and hid it once more. 

"We'll practice Friday," Adrien told him as he led him back toward the front door, and it was immediately clear that Skwisgaar wasn't welcome to stay and hang out. "Be here by seven-- no later, okay?"

"Ja, gots it," Skwisgaar said, shifting his gigbag back onto his shoulder. "Hej, thats lady what is here..."

"Don't worry 'bout her," Adrien said, brushing off the subject. "She can act a little weird, but she's harmless, alright? I'll see you Friday."

Skwisgaar stepped out onto the porch, and he heard the door lock almost immediately behind him.

\---

Despite having gotten into a real band and everything, Skwisgaar found that he may have had false expectations of what that really meant. He still hung out with his old friends more often than his bandmates, something that irked him considerably. It wasn't that he didn't like his friends, and it wasn't like he felt that close to his new bandmates, but he thought that being in a band would involve a lot more time playing music together than just a couple days a week. Skwisgaar couldn't get enough; he wanted to play all the time, wanted to play alongside other people rather than play by himself.

Luckily, he still had Rick to play with after class sometimes. It was a whole different kind of music, but it still felt better than playing alone. 

"Hey man, I'm meeting the guys at Burny's," Rick told Skwisgaar one evening as they packed up their instruments after a session. "You wanna come with?"

"What ams Burny?" Skwisgaar asked as he zipped his guitar back into its bag.

"It's a hot dog place, but not just any hot dogs-- like you can get all kinds of cool shit on 'em. Just come along, man. It's good to do other stuff once in a while. You barely even seen this city yet."

Rick had spent his whole life in New York, so Skwisgaar guessed he probably knew best about what was fun to do, but Skwisgaar never really did anything besides play music with people and go to some house parties. He didn't really see the point. Socialising wasn't exactly his strong point, and Skwisgaar hated doing things he wasn't good at. But 'the guys' probably meant people from school, people who appreciated music, so he could probably handle it, even if it was a waste of time.

Burny's turned out to be more interesting than it sounded from Rick's explanation. It was in the basement of a building and it was small, but it was crowded with people, almost all of them teenagers. The music was turned up loud and the girl working at the counter had streaks of vibrant colour in her hair and a lot of visible tattoos. Skwisgaar watched as she put hot dogs in a little paper tray for them and then loaded them with all kinds of strange toppings. Rick seemed to strategically plan his, but Skwisgaar just picked things at random, not even entirely sure what everything was and yet not wanting to look stupid. 

It wasn't until they reached the end of the counter to pay that Skwisgaar remembered the gig money he'd gotten from Adrien and slowly pulled the cash out from the pocket of his bag. He'd never had spending money before that he'd earned all on his own; it made him feel grown up, like he was a real man, really succeeding in the world.

And yet, part of it felt a little bit wrong. If he was going to be earning money on his own, he shouldn't be relying so heavily on his mother to support him from halfway across the world.

But Skwisgaar stopped thinking about any of that once they brought their food over to a large booth. A couple of them were classmates from school and a couple of them were people he'd never seen in his life, but he slipped in next to Carrie, Rick at his other side.

"Rick says to me 'the guys', so doesn't expects you here," he told her. She wasn't the only girl there, either, but she was the only one he recognised.

"Well, here I am," Carrie said, but she wasn't smiling, just took a big bite of her food and chewed without saying much more.

With the loud music and all the people talking at once, with the conversation shifting quickly from one thing to the next, Skwisgaar wasn't able to follow along much, but his hot dog was good, and Rick still made a point to include him from time to time. 

Carrie left before all the others, saying something about having to go to practice.

"She have lessons just in schools, ja?" Skwisgaar asked Rick, confused, as she took off. They had private lessons every day, so he didn't understand why she'd be going at night like this.

"Nah, man, softball season is starting up," Rick explained between slurping the last sips of his drink loudly through a straw. 

"Oh. Like Tyler." Skwisgaar didn't really understand why people would want to play sports, though, if they were musicians. "Ams why she don't hangs up with us lately?"

Rick gave him kind of a strange look, and Skwisgaar mentally double-checked his English.

"Skwisgaar, you uh... know she likes you, right?" Rick asked after a long pause.

Skwisgaar stared blankly in response. He only realised just then that he hadn't seen Carrie outside of school since before New Year's.

\---

He was frustrated when he got home from band practice late in the evening. They were writing a new song, but every idea Skwisgaar tried to contribute seemed unwelcome. He didn't know punk, they said. He lacked experience writing and was young. But he was the guitarist, and not only that, he'd been coming up with original material for ages now. Maybe not full songs or anything, because honestly, he didn't care about the other instruments in a song, but he could improvise and he could play great guitar solos, but they rejected everything he threw at them.

He was still new to the band and it was obvious, and that rankled him to his core.

Still sullen about it by time he found himself at his own apartment, Skwisgaar pushed open the door a bit too hard and tossed his shoes noisily at the floor and wall just inside. 

"Finally you come home," said Yo from their small kitchen table where he seemed to be filling answers into a workbook. Skwisgaar was immediately struck by how much of a waste of time that was when _he_ was in a real band, even if they weren't letting him write.

"You misses me?" Skwisgaar asked him, sarcasm dripping from his voice, but Yo didn't seem to catch it. He just hopped up from the table, went over to his desk, and picked up a small package.

"This come in mail today from Japan," Yo said, and Skwisgaar felt curiosity begin to nudge his bad mood out of the way. He came around Yo's desk and set his guitar down on it's stand next to their amps. "Asked older brother to send. They are tapes of punk music."

Skwisgaar prickled up, part of him wanting nothing more to do with punk music for the night, but Yo started pulling each one out of the package and Skwisgaar saw the writing across the cassettes, realising they were bands he'd never heard of, ones from Japan. He hadn't listened to most American punk bands either, though.

"Okej, let hears them," Skwisgaar said, feeling a bit curious. Yo's music was sometimes pretty interesting, even if he didn't ever want to admit that out loud. If Yo played something besides jazz on his guitar, Skwisgaar might be more willing to compliment his music taste. 

"You will like more than American punk music, I think," Yo said calmly as he loaded the first cassette into their stereo. "First one is called _Gastunk_."

Skwisgaar sat down on the edge of his bed, silent, ready to listen. When the tape started rolling, he was struck as always with Yo's music about the prominence of the bass guitar, but with this band, he quickly realised that it was even more intense than that. The bass held down the rhythm and the melody, and although the guitar was taking a back seat and playing harmony (which by itself, he would consider a personal offense), it was simultaneously setting the guitar free to soar and show off. He couldn't understand the words, but that wasn't uncommon for him and he didn't particularly mind; if he wanted fancy words, he could go read some crappy poetry.

This guitarist was amazing, he thought right away. But at the first guitar solo they encountered, Skwisgaar's eyes widened.

"Ams like metal," he said, looking up in bewilderment.

"Mm," Yo nodded once, a hint of a smile in the corner of his lips. "American and English punk guitar is not like this, I think."

No, it certainly wasn't. The guitar was always repetitive, caged, the focus only on the words the singer was saying to a militant drum beat. It was boring! But if punk music could really be like this, with guitar free to soar like a hawk, it was music Skwisgaar was sure he could devote himself to. Listening to Yo's new tapes, he lost every trace of his earlier animosity toward his bandmates; instead, he couldn't wait to show up to Fuckface Academy's next rehearsal.


	15. Chapter 15

"Okay guys, we need to go through 'Hate Letter' a few more times before tomorrow night," Adrien said to them as they set up for rehearsal.

"Sure thing, Captain," Anabelle said with an eye roll, "even though we've been playing that song forever."

"Try playing it _better_ , then," Adrien shot back, but just a hint of a grin graced his lips. "Didn't sound so hot at last week's show."

"Want to start with that, then?" Tyler asked, adjusting a tuning peg on his bass. "Or should we just start at the top of the setlist?"

"Nah, let's start there. It's our last song, so it's the most important. Gotta leave 'em thirsty for more, yeah? So they remember us even after the next band starts up."

Skwisgaar stuck the cable jack into his guitar, giving it a test strum, then turned the amp up a bit.

"Let's does it."

Once Anabelle was seated on her throne, they launched right into it.

Skwisgaar, though, wasn't feeling it. The first time through, he played it just like Tyler had taught him, imitating the exact guitar part some guy named Aric had made up a billion years ago. But Skwisgaar wasn't Aric, and Aric was long gone, and even after they played it through once, Adrien was firing off critiques. It wasn't their playing that was a problem, though, Skwisgaar thought-- it was that the song itself was _boring_.

It was one of Fuckface Academy's first songs, and amongst the handful of fans they'd managed to muster it was their most popular. At least, it was the only one most people who had seen more than one of their shows could recognise. 

Skwisgaar, however, saw room for improvement in pretty much every measure. Especially after listening to the punk music Yo had been showing him lately, he almost couldn't stand it anymore. The boring, repetitive chords, the droning bassline... Skwisgaar guessed the lyrics were probably decent, but even after all this time, he had never bothered to listen to all of them. So when they started to go through the second run, they hit the chorus and Skwsigaar started to embellish. He changed up the riff, made it something worth listening to, and even when Adrien looked at him in confusion, he didn't go back to the boring and predetermined. It wasn't until they made it to the bridge, where Skwisgaar launched into an untimely solo, and Tyler's fingers stumbled and got lost without being able to lean on the guitar part he was used to that Adrien stopped them.

"Skwis, what the hell are you playing?"

Skwisgaar stared back defiantly, as if he had been playing it this way every other one of the billion times they'd rehearsed this song.

"Is better."

"Eh... it just doesn't sound _punk_ ," Adrien said, rubbing the stubbly side of his head. 

"That's because they're metal chords," Anabelle piped up.

"Are we a metal band?" Adrien asked, his expression and his whole body language prickling. " _No_. Play it right, Skwisgaar."

\---

Skwisgaar didn't see any sign of Tyler or Adrien when he got to the venue, which wasn't too shocking given that he had gotten there pretty early, but a familiar drum kit was already set up and waiting in the stage area. Skwisgaar unpacked his guitar and a cable from his gigbag and set it on a stand. The bar wasn't open yet, so probably no harm would come from leaving it for a minute.

The back door was propped open. With a mild curiosity, Skwisgaar meandered out the door only to find Anabelle crouched on the cement, having a cigarette in the shelter of the bar's overhang. 

"Hej," Skwisgaar said, and she turned to him with a smile.

"Skwis! Hey. You're pretty early."

"So's you."

Anabelle shrugged. "Ashley had plans, so she dropped me off before she headed out. No big deal, though." She took a drag of her cigarette, and Skwisgaar leaned back against the wall next to her. "We have shitty luck with weather, huh? Won't get a great turnout with this rain..."

"Why?" Skwisgaar looked out into the drizzle as he pulled his hair back into a ponytail.

"Mmm... We're the first set tonight, so the odds are already against us. And a lot of people just don't feel like going out if the weather's bad, I guess." 

"Huh." Skwisgaar didn't think it was so bad, but he supposed that even he had days when he wanted to stay in bed all day because of the rain.

She turned out to be right. Even though the bar was supposed to be fairly popular, they took the stage with only four people in the room, and although more people had trickled in from the main bar by their third song, the room was still less than half filled. Skwisgaar didn't even see any of his friends there this time. But the four of them plowed through, and when they got to 'Hate Letter', Skwisgaar played it the way he wanted, made it sound _good_.

As soon as his chords began to deviate, he saw the tension bleed into in Adrien's shoulders, but they were live and there was nothing he could do about it. If the audience didn't like it, then Skwisgaar wouldn't do it again. There were so few people there, it was hardly a risk anyway. It was worth it to try.

And the crowd _did_ seem to be a little more into it. And maybe that was why Adrien blew up at him afterward. Skwisgaar let him spill all the angry words he wanted without even fighting back. He wasn't that great at confrontation in the first place, even though he was a grown man and could certainly defend himself just fine. It was just especially difficult to form a quick rebuttal when even English was still a little bit of a struggle. 

"I don'ts understands why you ams so mad," Skwisgaar finally said evenly when Adrien had stopped talking. "I just makes it better. The guys what watches it claps. You doesn't wants to be goods?"

"It's _my song,_ " Adrien told him, sounding tired. "If you want to come up with your own shit, then do it. Write your own songs, Skwisgaar. Don't fuck up mine."

Skwisgaar left the bar before the rest of the bands had finished playing. He wasn't old enough to drink, anyway. At least, not at a bar. There was a crack of lightning as he found Anabelle waiting for her ride in the alley out back. 

"Skwis! You're not going to walk home in this storm, right?"

"Ja, I am." Skwisgaar shrugged.

"You want a ride?" she asked.

"That girl don't minds?"

"It's on the way," Anabelle told him simply, so Skwisgaar took his guitar off his shoulder to wait alongside her. After a moment of quiet, he eyed her cigarette from the corner of his eye.

"Can I tries that?" 

"Huh?" She looked where he was looking and then kind of held up her hand. "This?" She held it out to him. 

He took it from her and inspected it vaguely before lifting it closer to his lips. He suddenly felt very stupid, but he still wanted to try it. He could handle alcohol, there was no reason he couldn't handle this.

"I just breathes it unside my mouths, ja?" 

"Yeah. Don't inhale too much, though." She looked like she kind of wanted to laugh at him, but that just made Skwisgaar more resolute. He put his lips to the cigarette and sucked, and after just a few seconds, his lungs burned and he was coughing, and then she _was_ laughing at him, not even bothering to hide it.

He handed the cigarette back to her and said nothing, just made a vaguely disgusted face. Stupid cigarette. She was already taking another drag of it, too, like it was so easy.

"Good job tonight, by the way," she told him suddenly as he stood scowling. "I liked it, what you did with Adrien's song."


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May, 1989.

"What took you so long, man?"

Rick was sprawled out with his back on the piano bench of room #22C when Skwisgaar strolled in, gigbag slung over one shoulder. 

"Could've get starts without me," Skwisgaar said flippantly. "Mr. Becker holds me back to him." He shut the door behind him and started to unpack his guitar, though he did note that Rick wasn't moving from his place on the bench, his trumpet still neatly packed in its hard case.

"What'd you do this time?" Rick asked, quirking his head up a bit.

"He tells to me the warning, like maybe I don't does so goods soon on performance review." Skwisgaar shrugged. His first year in music school was almost over, and he still had never learned what could possibly be the use of playing guitar notes out of a book. 

"Huh? Why not?" Rick stretched a little, threatening to roll right off the edge of the bench. "Man, you never stop practicing. You're gonna ace it-- Man, put that away, let's get outta here," Rick added as Skwisgaar started to plug in his guitar.

"You doesn't wants to play?" Skwisgaar asked, mild disbelief clinging to each syllable of the question. 

"There's so much going on," Rick sighed in frustration. "Theory tests, year-end reviews, all this bullshit... Just want to hang out and chill, you know what I'm saying?"

Confusion stitched into Skwisgaar's face, but he pulled the plug from his guitar. There was never a time when he didn't want to practice-- not really. "If you gots an better ideas." 

Rick sat up and rolled his shoulder, rubbing it a bit. "As a matter of fact, I do. You wanna see where my brother works?"

\---

The building they walked up to was unremarkable on the outside, painted a deep, ugly green, and even after he followed Rick inside, he couldn't see the reason they had come. There was nobody inside except for two people in collared shirts leaning bored behind a counter, one of whom was Marcus. The other was a girl that Skwisgaar thought was rather pretty. She smiled when they came in, showing off the braces on her teeth, and Skwisgaar thought they were interesting. 

"What's up, Ricky?" Marcus asked, surprised to see them. "You guys wanna play?"

"Can we?" Rick asked, going straight to the counter and leaning his elbows on it. "No one's here."

"Whataya say, Shelly-- you gonna tell on me if I give 'em a free game?"

The girl shrugged. "I don't care. Shoot, go play with 'em if you want. I think I can handle this crowd." Skwisgaar looked around for the crowd, but they were really the only ones there. 

"Cool, thanks Shell." Marcus came out from behind the counter, grinning. "C'mon guys." 

Skwisgaar trailed after Rick and Marcus, absolutely lost. Marcus led them into a dark room where glowing things adorned the walls in the shapes of stars and planets.

"You ever played laser tag, Skwisgaar?" Marcus asked, picking up a clanking vest from a row of pegs on the wall. Skwisgaar shook his head dumbly as Rick clambered into a vest of his own. 

"No worries, man. It's easy," Rick assured him, and then pulled what looked like a gun off the side of the vest. "Just shoot the other guys and don't let 'em shoot you."

"Does it hurts?" Skwisgaar asked, but Rick just gave a bark of laughter in response. Marcus handed him a vest and Skwisgaar put it over his head quizzically, detaching the gun just as Rick had. He tried the trigger a few times, but nothing happened.

"Gotta wait until the game starts," Rick told him sagely. "C'mon, let's go in."

Skwisgaar pushed through the door behind Rick and found himself in the most confounding maze. Everything was glowing, but there were walls and little tunnels, platforms and windows everywhere. 

"Spread out, guys," Marcus said, and the two of them left Skwisgaar alone and vaguely confused. He flexed the trigger a few more times, waiting for something to happen. Suddenly a loud buzz rang out through the arena and music began to pour from unseen speakers. The gun in Skwisgaar's hand came to life and as he pulled the trigger once more, a red light blazed forth.

He started to look around, but he had barely taken three steps when a sound came from his vest and the blinking lights decorating him flickered out.

"Gotcha!" Rick laughed down at him from a platform above.

\---

After four games of laser tag and dinner at Rick's place, Skwisgaar came home to his apartment worn out and body aching for sleep, but he knew he needed to practice guitar before letting himself rest. For just a second he thought that maybe taking a day off entirely wouldn't hurt, but he was lying to himself.

"Okaeri," Yo said quietly over the sound of his own guitar playing from across the room as Skwisgaar pushed the door open, and Skwisgaar nodded at him in response. As he lay down his guitar on his bunk, he noticed a note taped to the telephone, written entirely in Japanese.

"This am...?" Skwisgaar asked, holding the note up. 

"Ah, your mother call while you gone," Yo said as if it were an afterthought. Skwisgaar made a soft sound of affirmation and then gave the note one more glance before setting it aside. It seemed like it said more than that, but he couldn't make out any of Yo's strange, foreign writing. 

He put one hand on the phone to return her call, but one look at the clock told him that it would be too late in Sweden for his mother to answer, so while Yo played, Skwisgaar used the bath. And when he got out, Yo traded with him while Skwisgaar took some time to practice. But he was having a bad practice day. His fingers weren't doing what he wanted them to do, and more than anything he hated days like that. He was the one in control of his hands, not the other way around!

He turned off the light and slipped into bed before Yo even emerged from the bath, but he lay awake, tired with his mind running circles long after Yo came out and creaked his way into the bunk above him.

"Godnatt," Skwisgaar murmured to him at last, but Yo seemed to already be asleep.

\---

Skwisgaar intended to wake early and return his mother's call the next morning, but first block of the day brought his sight-reading final, and Skwisgaar was entirely unprepared. He sat in the hallway with the rest of his class waiting his turn to enter the classroom, his fingers playing an imaginary fretboard on his leg as he watched each of his classmates enter in turn and come out, looking somewhere on a scale from 'more sure of themselves than when they had entered' to 'on the verge of tears'.

Neither one made Skwisgaar feel any better.

But when Billy Sanderson popped back into the hallway with a face etched with uncertainty, Skwisgaar rose to his feet and forced himself to step into the room with no more tension than he did any other day of the week. Mr. Fabian gave him a bracing smile as he handed Skwisgaar a score.

"Caro Mio Ben," Skwisgaar mumbled out loud, looking at the front, but relief began trickling from his chest into his limbs. He knew this one. They hadn't done it in class enough for Skwisgaar to be able to memorise it, but he'd heard Yo practice singing it in the bath enough times that Skwisgaar was fairly confident he could at least pass.

\---

After school, Skwisgaar was a particular brand of tired he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before. He assumed this was something like stress. That was what Rick kept calling it. He had another test the day after tomorrow but it was written theory and although Skwisgaar didn't feel confident, he just felt like he couldn't care that much. Not yet. Maybe he would study tomorrow. 

He collapsed on his bunk, inhaled, and exhaled before he realised that Yo wasn't around. It was quiet and he had his own space for the moment. No crappy jazz music, no listening to Yo muttering himself in his weird language, no Yo bothering him to do anything he didn't want to do. It was even nice to be away from Rick, or at least Rick's boisterous family. Skwisgaar sort of wanted nothing more than just to fall asleep, but his heart was beating in his ears and in his head he was counting through a list of things he needed to do. Just two more days and it would be the weekend. 

When the phone rang, Skwisgaar's eyes snapped open as if the sound had been a gunshot. He only reached for it as quickly as he did in order to shut it up.

"Hallå," he said brusquely, not bothering to hide his annoyance from the ear on the other end.

" _Oh, it's you this time._ "

" _Mom,_ " Skwisgaar sighed. 

" _Last time I called, a boy said something in another language to me,_ " his mother said with something halfway between a chuckle and a reprimand. " _But more importantly, you never called me back!_ "

" _I've been busy,_ " Skwisgaar said plainly. 

" _Too busy to call your own mother?_ "

" _Yes,_ " Skwisgaar said, though in reality, he just hadn't wanted to wake her. 

" _Oho, then let's hear what you're so busy with, hm?_ " Serveta asked, using that annoying voice she used whenever he told her something slightly less than the truth. She always knew.

" _School,_ " he offered. " _I have tests._ " 

" _Your term is almost over,_ " she said. It wasn't a question, so he said nothing. Prompted by the long silence, she continued, " _Tell me which day you finish so I can get your plane ticket._ " 

Skwisgaar screwed up his face. " _Plane ticket?_ " 

" _Back to Sweden._ " 

" _Do you think I'm going to fail?_ " he asked, a rush of heat filling his chest like a balloon. 

" _Are you?_ " He nearly could hear her rolling her eyes from the other side of the world. " _For summer break, Skwisgaar._ " 

His stomach knotted up and Skwisgaar forced himself to take a deep breath. 

" _It's expensive,_ " he hedged, but in truth, he hadn't thought about it at all. He suddenly remembered back to when he was first registering for school. It felt like he was a different person back then, but he almost remembered it. The school was unable to house students during the summer... But maybe he could stay with Rick or something? What was Yo going to do? Skwisgaar hadn't thought to ask him anything about his summer plans. 

_"Well, that's for me to worry about, isn't it?_ " his mother asked, her voice a bit tight. It had been a while since they had spoken, Skwisgaar was only now realising. 

" _June sixth,_ " he conceded. 

" _Tch. That's less than two weeks from now, Skwisgaar!_ " she scolded. " _Tell me sooner next time_."

After he hung up the phone, Skwisgaar found himself wondering whether or not he missed his mother.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _June, 1989._

The song was starting to come together. They'd been working on it for the past three days in Adrien's basement, and every phrase they added seemed like magic. It was too easy, too _good_. Skwisgaar was sure it was because Adrien had finally backed off his style of playing, just a little bit. He'd stopped nagging, anyway, even if he still would shoot him dirty looks every once in a while when he thought Skwisgaar was overstepping his boundaries. Skwisgaar got around that by not particularly caring.

They blasted through the bridge with sloppy improvisation, but that would lead ultimately to progress and they all knew it. Skwisgaar felt jazzed and alive and ready to play all night, but it was Anabelle who broke their momentum.

"It's almost nine, guys," she piped up. "Ash and I've got plans."

"C'mon, we can't stop now," Tyler countered. "Look how much we got done-- we could finish tonight."

"You can't be a little late?" Adrien implored. 

"There's no being late for date night," Anabelle said, firm. "I'm off tomorrow, so we can practice again then."

"I got a game tomorrow..." Tyler hedged. 

"And I'm the one holding us back?" Anabelle asked with an eyebrow raised. "At least I don't play a sport that can last eight hours."

"Well, I'll have the money from the last show for you guys tomorrow," Adrien said with the hint of a smirk. "So that should be some motivation to get your asses back over here and work for it."

"Fines to me," Skwisgaar said with a shrug as he started to pack his guitar up. "But hej, I's leave soon for the summers, so let's got this songs done for tomorrow."

A chorus of "What?" and "What the fuck?" and "What the hell, man?" rang back at him in response but Skwisgaar was at least fairly sure they weren't responding to a problem in his English.

"Goins back to Sweden," he explained.

"When?" Anabelle asked, looking surprised.

"Few day."

For a moment, there was quiet. But then Adrien said, "That's a shame, man. You're a good guitarist."

"Why that's a shame, then?" Skwisgaar asked, wrinkling his nose a bit. There was nothing bad about him being the best.

Tyler and Anabelle exchanged a look that Skwisgaar couldn't really read, but Adrien was level.

"It's a shame we're gonna have to find a replacement for you, that's all."

"You don'ts got to do nothinks," Skwisgaar shrugged. "I comes back in August."

Something angry passed over Adrien's face and his lip curled. "You're a good guitarist, Skwisgaar. But you're not worth putting the whole band on hiatus for."

Skwisgaar may have been surprised, but it didn't show on his face. He didn't let it. 

"You's problem then." Skwisgaar shouldered his gigbag. He wasn't surprised to hear Adrien say something less than kind to him, but he was surprised to hear that Adrien didn't think he was worth it. "I sees you tomorrows, then."

"Don't bother," Adrien said as Skwisgaar's foot met the first of the basement steps.

"Dude, chill," said Tyler gently.

"I will. I still gets paid, I think so."

"Fuck that," Adrien said, following up the stairs behind him. "I can get your cut right now."

Upstairs, Adrien pushed past Skwisgaar and into his bedroom, and Skwisgaar waited, his eyes lingering on the lady asleep on the floor in front of the television. There were footsteps on the stairs behind him, but he didn't turn, didn't want his now ex-bandmates to look at him. But then two arms slipped around him from behind and gave him a solid squeeze.

"Good luck, Skwisgaar," Anabelle told him, and she pulled away as quickly as she'd latched on.

"He's not going to need it," Tyler said confidently. "He's got skills."

"I will bes fine," Skwisgaar shrugged. "What's about her?"

"Her?" Tyler asked, but Skwisgaar nodded at the lady.

"She ams Adrien's sisters?" Skwisgaar had never let himself ask. Adrien always said to ignore her, but if he was out of the band, he didn't care anymore about pissing Adrien off.

"No," Anabelle whispered. "His mom."

She looked up abashed as Adrien re-emerged from his room, and he shoved a handful of cash in Skwisgaar's face.

"Here. Now get the hell out of here. Have a _great_ summer."

"Thanks you," Skwisgaar said stiffly, pushing the money into a pocket, without meeting Adrien's eyes, but he did give one last look at the woman passed out on the floor. That was Adrien's mother.

Belatedly, Skwisgaar felt for the first time like he had something in common with him.

\---

"This ones ams yours," Skwisgaar said from where he knelt on his floor, his suitcase filling up before him. He held out the cassettes toward Yo. 

"Mm-mm." Yo shok his head. "Keep them. They are copy. Real ones are at home still."

"Huh. Thanks you," Skwisgaar murmured. He hadn't truthfully wanted to part with them; he hadn't finished learning to copy some parts of them himself. They were like textbooks he hadn't fully finished studying... but about a billion times more interesting. "You cans, eh... has some of my picks you likes in return."

He groped haphazardly at more objects from the desk, tossing most into the trash, but a few into his bag. When he got to the cash he'd gotten from Adrien two days before, he paused. It wouldn't be any good in Sweden, but he supposed he could get it changed... Though he was coming back soon, so maybe he should just save it...? He might misplace it, though.

"Hej Yo."

"Hm?"

"Does you just going to keeps you's American money untils you come back? Lose somes with exchange, I thinks..."

Yo shrugged. "I just put it into my bank."

"Is ables to get bank accounts when you ams foreign?"

"You have visa to live here, so is no problem."

Skwisgaar blinked and looked back down at his suitcase. Maybe that was worth looking into.

So even though his flight home was the day after next, the next day found Skwisgaar and his passport fidgeting in line at the bank a block from his school. When he made it up to the counter, a woman smiled at him and asked how she could help him.

"Wants to open a account," Skwisgaar said as clearly as he could. He was ushered off to a room to the side where a man in a tie asked him a thousand questions and scrutinized his passport and Skwisgaar realised more and more that even though he'd been able to make it one year in America at music school, he would have to work very hard to understand every day conversations that had nothing to do with music.

Though, he wasn't sure he planned to have that many. Seemed a little bit like a waste of time.

The man wasted a lot of time, too, explaining different types of accounts to Skwisgaar, of which he understood less than half. Finally, the man asked, "What are your savings goals? Why would you like to open an account?"

"Wants to keep my America money safe," he answered. "And asides, to save up. Gots someone what's I want to pays back to."

\---  


Skwisgaar hadn't expected Rick's mom to offer to take him to the airport. The whole drive, she talked about how sweet of a boy he was and how she was happy that 'Ricky' had become friends with him while Rick made gagging faces at Skwisgaar in the back seat. Skwisgaar had to work at not laughing while trying to offer polite responses.

When they arrived at the airport, she parked the car in a big garage and she and Rick and his little sister Chelsea all walked inside with him. She helped him find where to check in for his ticket and how to check his bags. Before they left him at the security checkpoint, Rick's mom gave him a lunch she had packed for him, and Rick gave him some sort of hug-- a weird, manly kind of one that Skwisgaar had never before received. 

"See ya in a couple months, man," Rick said, clapping him on the back.

As he checked through security, Skwisgaar thought it strange that Rick's mother had done so much for him when his own mother had sent him off to the airport in Sweden alone. But then again, Rick's family was much different than his own.

He didn't mind his mother's way. He was the man of his household and his mother treated him as such. It was different for Rick. But it wasn't so bad Rick's way either, maybe.

 

He waited for an eternity to get on the airplane, and even though he had done this only one year past, there was a hint of fear coiling up in his stomach. But this time, he found it less of a challenge when the flight attendants asked him questions about snacks, or even when the person sitting next to him asked to get past him to use the bathroom. Maybe it had taken a little while, but maybe he was finally used to the US and the people in it.

It wasn't until he departed from the Stockholm airport that he realised how much he had missed hearing his own language, though. Finding the bus that would take him back home to Öland seemed far easier than _anything_ he'd done in the past year.

\---

Skwisgaar was tempted to wander through town, maybe even visit Mr. Brunell's shop when he got back, but he had luggage with him, and he felt exhausted from traveling. It was mid-afternoon, but the time felt all wrong, like he should still be asleep. He trudged home with his belongings, noticing things along the way that he felt he'd never noticed even though they'd been there all his life. 

At his front door, Skwisgaar paused with his hand on the knob. After a deep breath, he turned it, then poked his head inside.

" _Mom? I'm home,_ " he called out, but he received no immediate response. Not unusual, though. He dragged his suitcases just inside the front door, shucked off his shoes, and collapsed on the couch. Home.

It felt like only a few moments had passed when a hand touched his shoulder.

" _I've let you sleep for two hours now. Don't you think it's time to get your bags put away?_ "

Skwisgaar sighed, not wanting to move, and he squeezed his eyes shut. His mother just laughed.

" _Come on, up with you. I'll have dinner for you soon enough._ "

Skwisgaar opened his eyes, glancing over at his discarded luggage. He did want to practice, as he must have missed over an entire day of playing by now due to travel. And he did want to eat whatever his mother had made for him.

So then, why did everything feel so strange?


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _June, 1989._

When Skwisgaar's bleary eyes blinked good-morning, disorientation settled over him in place of sleepiness. Pale light glinted at his face from a window next to the bed when he was instead expecting a warmer, softer light to come from some vague point across the room, the little window above the kitchen sink. His blankets were different; older, and both more and less familiar, and he heard a nagging sound he couldn't quite place for a moment. 

But then he did.

Skwisgaar shot up in his bed, his gut twisting like snakes slithering inside of him. He thought maybe his mother would possibly want to spend some time with him since he'd only just come home, but apparently she was already entertaining _guests_ , even though he'd just gotten in yesterday. What fucking time was it even?

Skwisgaar shoved his hand back through tangled hair, then disgustedly twisted out of the tangled blankets trapping his legs. He stumbled out of bed and wandered to his closet, but none of the clothes he wanted to wear were unpacked from his suitcase yet. It took only a few more seconds of trying to will his ears to stop working for him to make the decision to fall into whatever was at the front of his closet. 

After that, he tossed his wallet in his pocket and slammed the front door on his way out. He was only halfway down the front walk when he realised he had forgotten his gigbag and it irked him, but going back inside when he could hear his mother doing _that_ wasn't worth it in the long run; he wasn't going anywhere where he'd need to play guitar. Probably.

Skwisgaar set off toward town. There wasn't much near their house. And suddenly, thinking of it as _their_ house seemed strange after all this time, even if one year was decidedly not all _that_ long. As more buildings began to rise into view, something in his chest filled up in way he didn't understand. Nostalgia? Maybe that wasn't right. Whatever it was, it was a feeling that meant he was glad to be home, regardless of whatever resentment he felt toward his mother that morning.

But that feeling wore off gradually the further he got from home. There was absolutely no grandeur in Färjestaden. There weren't buildings so tall that Skwisgaar had to squint to see the tops of them, buildings that blocked out the sun. And most of all, everyone was _older_. Just old people doing old people errands, and none of this friends or classmates to pass the time with. 

He wondered what Rick was doing now. Rick's mother was probably making breakfast for everyone, with Chelsea playing with toys in front of the tv while Rick and Marcus argued on the couch about movies or music or other things that Skwisgaar couldn't totally follow. Well, they probably weren't doing any of that _right now_ since there were time zones... Skwisgaar's stomach rumbled, wishing he was getting a bit of Rick's mother's breakfast now. Or perhaps that his own mother wanted to make him breakfast.

And not only were things here in Färjestaden so boring, but he was startled at how different things suddenly seemed. Not much had changed, maybe, but it was staggeringly unfamiliar. There were a few shops that he was sure never existed before. Or maybe he had just never noticed them when they were a part of the daily scenery. 

Unconsciously, he gravitated toward Mr. Brunell's shop. After all, it had been Mr. Brunell who had believed in him from the beginning, and Mr. Brunell who had loaned them the money to pay for Skwisgaar to travel abroad. But when he got to the shop window and peered inside, everything was dark. Curiously, Skwisgaar approached the door only to find it locked with a sign taped to it. _Will re-open at noon,_ it read.

Skwisgaar felt vaguely put off by that, but he realised that he didn't remember when a normal opening time was for Mr. Brunell. Whenever he had stopped by before, it was usually after school let out. Thinking about his old school felt strange, too, all of a sudden.

Shaking it off, Skwisgaar stopped into a cafe down the block. He scrounged for kronor in his wallet before ordering a light breakfast, then sat to eat so that he could watch people pass by the front window. 

Everything may be smaller and more boring here, but for the first time in the past year, Skwisgaar finally didn't have a nagging feeling reminding him constantly how out of place he was. 

\---

Once Skwisgaar had exhausted every option he could think of to kill the time, he found himself trudging back toward home. Perhaps subconsciously (or perhaps not), he made sure to double back in a way that allowed him to pass by Mr. Brunell's once more, this time finding the shop well-lit with not only Mr. Brunell himself, but also two older teenagers inside. 

Although it was a relief to see a few people who weren't just _old_ , from the moment Skwisgaar stepped inside, a sense of awkwardness seized his chest. It vanished as quickly as it came on, however; Mr. Brunell looked up from what he was showing to the other customers to greet him as soon the door's tinkling bell announced his entrance.

"Oh, Skwisgaar! Welcome back." Mr. Brunell gave him a hearty grin before turning back to finish helping the other two. Skwisgaar wandered the shop, flipping through cassettes and looking through a rack of guitar straps (no matter how he adjusted it, his current one had been digging into his shoulder uncomfortably during gigs lately) until the others left. It took only a moment for Mr. Brunell to clap a hand on his shoulder from behind.

"Made it back from New York in one piece, I see! How was your flight?"

"Long," Skwisgaar said with a shrug. It felt weird to talk to Mr. Brunell again in person, somehow. Like he was talking to somebody from a different lifetime. He was, if he thought about it. But he didn't want to think about that too much. 

"Your business is doing pretty good, huh?" Skwisgaar used to never see other customers in here at the same time as himself.

"It's been picking up," he agreed. "I can't say I'm hurting at all, no."

Admittedly, Skwisgaar was relieved to hear that Mr. Brunell's loan to them wasn't causing any trouble, even though he wasn't sure about the trouble it was causing for his mother. It wasn't like she gave him the opportunity to ask, though.

"Now, how have your studies been going? You want to show off what you've learned?" Mr. Brunell asked. 

"I didn't bring my guitar," Skwisgaar said, though he'd been feeling somewhat empty-handed without it since he left home this morning.

"I can plug in one of the shop's for you," Mr. Brunell suggested. 

"It's not the same," Skwisgaar shrugged.

"Eh, that's too bad. Though you know, Skwisgaar, a real guitarist can play any guitar."

Skwisgaar prickled up, but tried not to let the burn of the reprimand show on his face. 

"I _can_. I just don't want to."

"Ah, well. I suppose I'll hear you play next time I stop over."

Skwisgaar wasn't even aware that Mr. Brunell knew where they lived, but... Maybe he was coming by to collect the loan payments from his mother? Something knotted in his stomach again and he tried his best to squish it away. 

"Sure," Skwisgaar offered, but picked up a pack of picks to look at rather than meet Mr. Brunell's eyes.

"So have you done anything fun there? Can't study guitar every waking second, can you?"

Skwisgaar was pretty sure he could, but he _had_ done quite a lot of fun things, too, right? He made a few friends, he went to parties-- his whole life had really turned one-eighty in the past year. Coming home almost felt like a step in the wrong direction.

"I've been playing in a band," he said, though not offering the fact that he'd been kicked out just before coming back home. He wasn't ready to admit to that yet. As much as he knew he didn't need them, it still stung at his chest and his pride. 

"Is that so? D'you have a tape so I could take a listen?"

"Not on me," Skwisgaar said flippantly, but he didn't think he had one at all. Maybe he could get one, if he was still in contact with Fuckface Academy, but he wasn't. Not really. He put the picks back on the rack and started looking over the available strings. Actually, he could use some new ones...

They made a little more chitchat about recent shipments and new indie bands before Skwisgaar decided on a new set of strings, and he emptied his wallet to pay for them, but he was still a little short. Mr. Brunell shrugged the discrepancy off, though. Skwisgaar figured it was since he was already in debt to the man. What difference was a few more kronor to Mr. Brunell?

But as he turned to leave the shop, Skwisgaar noticed maybe for the first time the jumbled mess of fliers and posters tacked sloppily on the board next to the door. They advertised upcoming events and concerts, workshops, classes, and a few of them were even from bands looking for musicians to fill their lineup. 

One near the left side of the board caught his eye over all the others, though.

 _Wanted: Öland's best guitarist,_ it read in bright, bold letters. 

Skwisgaar scoffed to himself. He wasn't just the best guitarist in Öland. He was the best guitarist in all of Sweden. At least, he _would_ be, if he wasn't yet. But he was pretty sure he already was.

He turned back to Mr. Brunell, uncertain.

"Hey, it's fine to call these numbers, right?" Skwisgaar asked, indicating the fliers. 

"That's what they're there for, Skwisgaar," Mr. Brunell chuckled. "You've taken an interest in the boys from earlier, then?"

Bemused, Skwisgaar looked back at the pictures on the flier. Now that Mr. Brunell mentioned it, those two did look pretty familiar.  



	19. Chapter 19

Skwisgaar peeked up from his fretboard at the clock hanging above the television. Four fourty-three. He didn't need to leave until five thirty, and it was only four fourty-three. His guitar had served as a welcome distraction from the clock for a spell, but he had fallen into a repeating pattern which allowed him to focus fully on the minutes ticking lethargically by.

Maybe it wouldn't be _so_ bad to be early. They wouldn't know how long he'd been waiting, and besides, he hardly remembered their faces; it would be embarrassing if he approached the wrong person.

So Skwisgaar made himself wait until 5:08, then dropped his guitar into his gigbag and with barely a nod to his mother, he left with it hanging over his shoulder. He took his time walking into town, and when he got to the storefront where he was supposed to meet up with the guys, he ducked into the cafe across the street to hang out until it was a more reasonable time. But despite his nerves, six o'clock rolled around quickly enough and he stepped back outside and leaned against the corner of the shop across the street, arms folded over his chest and guitar at his side.

Skwisgaar was staring off down the sidewalk when a tap on the shoulder turned his head. 

"Skwisgaar Skwigelf?"

He was staring at a grinning boy who was nearly a head shorter than him, and behind him, a taller boy with a stony face; both, he could tell, were a bit older than him. Skwisgaar nodded briefly and the shorter one stuck out his hand. A bit stiffly, Skwisgaar took it to shake.

"I'm Elvin. This is Jonas- he's the one you talked to on the phone."

"Pleased to meet you," Skwisgaar said, looking between the two. 

"Let's go get some coffee and talk," Elvin suggested, gesturing toward the cafe across the street, so awkwardly, Skwisgaar joined them in meandering back into the cafe he'd only just been loitering in while waiting for them. 

It was strange. He'd brought his guitar and everything, but these two hadn't brought _their_ instruments. They weren't going to play? How were they supposed to decide if they wanted to be in a band together if they weren't even going to play together? It wasn't as if _talking_ could tell you whether or not you could make good music together. 

But he obliged, and they ordered drinks and snacks, and took seats near the window. Elvin chattered on about anything but music for long enough that Skwisgaar wasn't sure he was in the right place at all. When Elvin paused for a sip of his drink, though, Jonas finally spoke up.

"So how long have you been playing guitar?"

"Just a couple years," Skwisgaar said, bristling slightly. He knew he hadn't been playing long compared to some others, but that didn't matter. He was still the best in Öland, easily. "And you? ...You're the guitarist, I'm guessing."

"Yeah. I started taking lessons about eight years ago. Who's your teacher?"

Skwisgaar supposed that was a valid question; Likely there were few enough guitar instructors in Färjestaden. 

"I'm self-taught," he said, busying himself with taking a long drink of his coffee. Still, he didn't miss the way Jonas' eyes flickered toward Elvin. "I'm attending a music school now, though, instead of secondary school."

They might be more impressed if he told them he was attending that school in New York, but he reminded himself quickly how Adrien had responded to his cockiness. He would maybe play it a little safer this time and not overdo it. Even if he knew he was better than this.

"Cool!" Elvin piped up. "I wish I could do something like that. I don't even want to go to secondary school, but my parents keep forcing me to stick with it."

"Eh, what do you even play?" Skwisgaar finally asked, realising suddenly and with some confusion that there were only two of them, and one of them was already a guitarist. What were they looking for another guitarist for?

"Bass," Elvin said, matter-of-factly. "I'm self-taught, too. But I think I'm pretty good."

"He's alright," Jonas added, straight-faced. Elvin was grinning, though, and apparently didn't take it as an insult.

"Where's your drummer, then? Vocalist?"

"I sing, too," Elvin told him. "We've had a couple drummers so far, but nobody was really good enough, so we're still looking... We have a demo, though! We recorded while we still had our last drummer. You want to check it out?"

He squirmed and reached back, fishing something out of his back pocket. It was a cassette tape, which he handed over to Skwisgaar. 

"I'll listen when I get home," Skwisgaar said, but he was having his doubts, now. Why would he want to play with a band that didn't even have enough members? "But why would you look for another guitarist when you're still looking for a drummer?"

"We need someone for rhythm," Jonas said simply, and Skwisgaar found it difficult to hide the disgust from tugging at his face. Why would they write an ad looking for the best guitarist in Öland if they only wanted someone to play rhythm? Anybody could do that. And besides, Skwisgaar was sure he was better than this Jonas, whether he'd been taking lessons for eight years or not.

But regardless of his doubts, Skwisgaar parted ways with the tape in his gigbag and a promise to call them again once he'd listened to it, even if it was possibly more out of curiosity than actual interest.

\--- 

Three days later found Skwisgaar at the front door of a house only a few blocks from Mr. Brunell's shop, but when he knocked, nobody answered. He hadn't worn a watch, but he supposed he might be a bit early. Still, it was pretty rude not to answer an invited guest.

So he pulled his guitar from his gigbag and seated himself next to the door, running his fingers through some warm up exercises. Skwisgaar wasn't nervous at all, he reflected, but why should he be? This band wasn't really _worth_ being nervous over. Sure, their tape had sounded pretty good, and he'd listened to it more than once, but they were desperate, Skwisgaar was pretty sure, and anyway, there was no way in hell that he would be sub par at playing rhythm guitar, no matter who it was.

He'd been pretty nervous when he tried out for Fuckface Academy, though.

It was probably nearly fifteen minutes later when Elvin strolled up to the front door, whistling. 

"Hey, Skwisgaar!" he said with an easy grin. "Couldn't get in?"

"No one's home, I think," Skwisgaar said, just a bit defensively. Why should he be able to get in? He knocked on the door and nobody answered. It wasn't as if it were his own home. Something about the way Elvin spoke to him made him somewhat uncomfortable, not dissimilar to the way many of the people he had met in New York spoke.

"Jonas is probably in there-- follow me."

Skwisgaar gave him a look, and as he hastily packed his guitar back into its bag, he realised Elvin wasn't carrying even a sign of a bass guitar. 

"You don't have an instrument again," Skwisgaar accused as Elvin led him around to the back side of the house. "Are we going to play this time?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Elvin said, waving him off. "My parents don't let me keep my bass at home. It's inside. Here," Elvin grabbed a small, rusted stepping stool from behind a shrub and climbed upon it. For a moment, he peered into a window, holding his hands around his eyes to shield away the sunlight, and a moment after that he was chuckling to himself.

"Oy! Jonas! Malin!" Elvin called into the glass as he rapped on the window with his knuckles. Skwisgaar was still blown away by the knowledge that Elvin didn't even keep his own bass to be too curious, though. How did he practice? Skwisgaar was starting to have second thoughts about these guys.

"They're going to be a minute or two, I think," Elvin said with an impish grin as he hopped down from the stool, but it was nearly five minutes later when Jonas opened the back door for them with red cheeks. There was a girl with mussed hair standing just behind him.

"Sorry to interrupt," Elvin joked as he let himself in. "But we do have a playdate and all."


End file.
